Distractions
by fourleggedfish
Summary: For a prompt on LiveJournal: Holmes being the victim of rape with Watson finding out and as usual having to deal with the aftermath. EXPLICIT non-con, violence, NC-17. May be triggering. There is plot involved yes, that's also a warning .
1. Chapter 1

**Title: **Distrations  
**Pairings: **Holmes/Watson friendship, perhaps pre-slash if you're so inclined  
**Rating: **NC-17  
**Warnings: **Non-con - see summary. May be triggering to some.  
**Disclaimer: **I disclaim everything. No, seriously - _everything_.  
**Summary:** This is in response to a Sherlock Holmes kinkmeme prompt on LJ: _"Ok, so I've read some really nice fills for Watson being raped and Holmes finding out (and taking care of him). But I'd really like it the other way round: Holmes being the victim of rape with Watson finding out and (as usual) having to deal with the aftermath. I want Holmes to be severely traumatized, confused, emotionally shattered and not at all his usual self; you know what I mean."_ If it's not your cup of tea, don't read. *points to prompt*

* * *

Holmes sauntered out of the boxing establishment, his waistcoat open and fluttering in the light breeze, Watson's customary winnings stuffed safely in his breast pocket. He could feel every individual ache from his opponent's fists, and the remembrance of each made him grin. His hand wandered up to press against his ribs where he had allowed the brute to get in a hit, a deliberate feint to get him to drop his left shoulder so that Holmes could cuff him about the ear. It had been brilliant, really. The whole evening had been brilliant, in fact – positively invigorating. Watson would fuss over him the moment he saw the cuts and bruises, but Watson needed work as much as Holmes did.

That thought made Holmes smile even wider, and a passing couple gave him a wide berth and a wary look. Holmes waved at them, his mannerisms drunken even though he had passed up all but his one allotted victory ale. The thrum of adrenaline intoxicated him; it was wonderful – a balm for boredom, a tonic for ennui, a –

Four o'clock: three men, grimy with dirt and sawdust from the same establishment that Holmes had just left, mouths twisted in angry grimaces, betting slips hanging from their pockets. Pinched features, slow and quiet gaits, deliberately looking across the street… They were following him. Losers, perhaps? Irritated at betting against Holmes? There had been quite a few of those this night.

Holmes quickened his pace, and the men behind him did the same. Definitely tailing him, then. Good. Holmes wasn't nearly done for the evening, and trouncing a few irritated gamblers seemed like decent sport. They wouldn't know what hit them. Holmes was on fire tonight – in top form, spry, flushed with his winnings, both monetary and intangible. He could spend the dregs of his aggression and nervous energy on these three louts and be off home to Baker Street the better for it.

He almost missed the fourth man, a deplorable oversight. Holmes caught movement from the corner of his eye and sidestepped the mouth of the alley he had just crossed in front of. A second of calculation passed: sawdust on the pant leg, tawny dust on the tow of the shoes, short stick, feet placed wide in a fighting stance to distribute his body weight preparatory to launching a blow, left foot forward, right hook to follow. Conclusion: three men to herd him forward, one to lie in wait – an ambush. Course of action: block right hook, uppercut to abdomen, entrap right arm, hitch up, dislocate shoulder, cross cut to chin, snap head back, take to ground, incapacitate with kick to jaw. Ample time to knock out before the other three men could reach them.

It should have been a simple thing, had Holmes noticed the way this fourth man rocked his weight backward instead of forward onto the balls of his feet. As it was, he didn't observe the evidence of a feint.

Holmes didn't even feel the knee that slammed into his gut, but he heard himself grunt at the lack of air in his chest. He didn't mean to double over, but he hadn't been braced for the blow, and then there were hands on him, arresting his fall just before his knees cracked against the ground. Six hands dragged him into the alley while the fourth man glanced around to make sure they hadn't been observed, and then all five of them slipped into the shadows between the filthy old buildings, the air rank with garbage and ammonia, the latter likely courtesy of alley cats marking their territory.

Holmes sucked in a breath while the pain blossomed out across his stomach – diaphragm expanding underneath bruised ribs, pressure on spleen and kidneys, nothing Watson can't bind for him later – and then placed his left foot, raking his right out to trip the man next to him.

"Son of a – "

Holmes lashed out with his newly freed arm and landed a glancing blow across some part of the man gripping his left arm, but it didn't dislodge him. On the contrary, Holmes found himself reeling from a kidney punch – forgot about the fourth man, he didn't stay at the mouth of the alley to play lookout the way Holmes expected – and then Holmes felt the grit of pebbles on the ground digging into his shoulder blades, and the back of his head smacked against the cobblestones. This must not be revenge, he thought; they must intend to rob him and beat him senseless, then clear away before the bobbies came to investigate the ruckus. Two minutes, Holmes estimated; two minutes before they knocked him unconscious. Fine. A simple mugging. He had suffered worse.

But then he found his arms pinned by wrists and elbows by two of the ruffians, and the third straddled him to hold him down. He could kick, but ineffectually, and the brute was too heavy for Holmes to roll him with his arms held down against the ground. New course of action: don't resist. They'll take the valuables from his person and scram. Let them rifle his pockets, snap his watch chain – again, not so bad in the grand scheme of things.

Holmes went limp and calmly informed them, "Money's in the left jacket pocket."

The man on top of him sneered. "Is that so?"

"Not that you deserve it." Watson would probably yell at him later for his bravado. "You bet against me fair and square."

Fourth Man glanced up at his compatriots with a faint smirk. "Isn't that cute. He thinks we want our money back."

"We do," Left Arm Man replied shortly.

Top Man snorted and looked down at Holmes with a frankly disconcerting expression. "That's not all we want, is it boys?"

Holmes' eyes roved past Top Man, grazed Fourth Man, and the flickered over the arm men before he met Top Man's glittering gaze again. "You intend to kill me, then."

All four of them snickered. "Oh no, Mister Holmes. Not that."

Holmes started at the mention of his name; he had thought himself successful enough at keeping his likeness out of the papers, and no one at the boxing ring was supposed to know his real name except the owner. He decided to play dumb for now. "Well," he replied, cocky as usual. "I'm afraid I don't catch your meaning, then."

Top Man's smile melted into something intense and dark. Instead of bantering, he touched a few fingers to Holmes' cheek so delicately that Holmes couldn't help but flinch. The fingers trailed over his jaw, which Holmes flung to the side, and then skimmed down the column of his neck, light and soft. The gentle touch sent a sickening tendril of something horribly warm to course through Holmes' body. The hair stood up all over Holmes' arms and throat, and he shuddered. Top Man shot his companions a wolfish grin at that. "Feel him shiver, boys."

This was not right. "What are you doing?" Holmes demanded.

Top Man ignored him. "He's almost pretty, isn't he? Something almost…soft about him." Here, laid both palms over Holmes' chest and rubbed him through his white shirt – no, through _Watson's _white shirt.

Holmes' eyes widened, but he arched into those hands – rough but gentle, pressing in circles over his breast. He didn't want to, but his body did it for him – he had no idea why.

"Ooh!" Left Arm Man cackled. "Look at 'im blush!"

"Yes," Top Man purred; he sounded manic in his glee. "Like a pretty little virgin, isn't he? Like that, poppet?" He rubbed his thumbs over Holmes' nipples through the shirt, too rough, and Holmes squirmed against his will, his brow furrowed in consternation. What the hell? "Feels good, doesn't it," Top Man crooned. He leaned down until their noses nearly touched, and Holmes craned his neck in a futile attempt to avoid the fetid breath that the man exhaled all over him. "There's more where that came from, pretty boy."

Holmes stared up at Top Man, dumbfounded, his jaw slack. "More of what?" He heard the sharp, frustrated edge to his voice; not understanding, being deliberately made to look ignorant, rankled him like nothing else. "What in bloody hell are you talking about? Get off of me!"

"Aha!" Top Man bore down on Holmes when Holmes started to twist his torso in a futile bid to buck him off. "Got some spirit, hasn't he, boys?" He wrapped a huge palm around Holmes' neck and exerted just enough pressure to warn him into stilling. "Well, that's half the problem here, isn't it? Like a wild horse, eh? Doesn't know his place. Needs to be shown."

Holmes panted and felt his blood pressure rise in a dull rash past his ear drums. The fingers across his throat loosened, but he felt overly aware of their weight across his windpipe. It coalesced for him, then – the way Top Man had been touching him, the reason they had chosen such a dark, godforsaken alley, the way they were holding him down and going on about his blushes… More in disbelief now than doubt, Holmes' eyes widened a fraction and he breathed, "What?"

Top Man's face split in a slow, malevolent grin. "Ah. The Great Detective," he mocked. "Gets it now, does he?"

Holmes squirmed on instinct, but the fingers at his throat pressed down hard enough to cut off his breathing and he forced himself to hold still again while he took stock of the situation. He had his right foot planted firmly on the ground, but too little leverage against Top Man's bulk to make use of it yet. Arms immobilized, airway threatened…think! There were only four of them. Top Man, the Arm Men, and Fourth Man who was lurking and prowling about the cluster of men on the ground. The Arm Men were slight – easy to overcome if he could dispatch Top Man, or at least get free of him long enough to land a few solid blows. Killing blows – pull no punches. Incapacitate by any means necessary. Fourth Man, though…he looked harmless, but he was an unknown quantity. He could have a weapon, not that Holmes much cared about getting shot. Still, letting himself get shot would reduce his chances of victory, and now Holmes was thinking too much and doing too little, and Top Man had his hands all over his chest again. Wait for the right moment. This position would help none of them achieve their goals. They would all have to shift; he would make his move then.

"Pretty," Top Man muttered. He didn't seem to be looking at Holmes anymore, his gaze abstractly settled on the swirl of his hands over Holmes' body.

Forty two buttons, Holmes thought. Between all five of them, they had forty two buttons. Top Man's breath smelled like rotting gums; he would have to ask Watson to pour alcohol in his ear when he got home. And the tongue felt slimy…like a fish carcass. Slobbery – Holmes tensed against his will when Top Man fitted their mouths together, and discovered that he had instinctively tried to wrench his head to the side. Huge, meaty fingers grabbed his face to hold him still; he would have marks along his jaw in the shape of fingers. Immaterial. Don't resist yet…not yet… He couldn't breathe through his mouth, not with lips sealed over his, and a protuberance of foreign tongue forced in against his own. The stench of the man assaulted his nostrils and Holmes gagged around Top Man's tongue, to the apparent amusement of the arm men. Ignore it. It's only one small indignity, of little consequence. Wait for the right moment…

Top Man pulled back with a sickening smack of lips and Holmes gasped in what untainted air he could. His hands were balled into fists in spite of the arm men's knees pressed against his wrists, fingernails cutting crescents into his palms. This was disgusting – he could taste the man, and for a moment, he thought he would be sick right there.

Thankfully, Holmes managed to swallow it back, but Top Man noticed the effect he'd had, and it seemed to enflame the worst sort of passion in a man. "What's the matter, Mister Holmes? Am I not to your liking?"

Holmes probably should have kept silent, but he was too furious and confused by now to hold back the retort. "Not at all. You are revolting."

Top Man smiled and purred, "Is that so."

"It is most definitely so!" Holmes struggled against his captors for a moment, then forced himself still again. He couldn't afford to waste his energy.

"Hm." Top Man shifted and Holmes gave a full body flinch when he felt the hardness dig into his abdomen. "Maybe you'd prefer something a little more…mmm…substantial?"

All four of them snickered and Holmes breathed heavily for several heartbeats, glaring at the wall of the building to his right rather than at the foul man straddling him. Once again, he didn't understand this innuendo, and it infuriated him that even now, he should be made to look even more a fool than he already did. "I would prefer you to go to hell. Even better, to send you there myself."

"Poor little poppet." Top Man's fingertips trailed suggestively over Holmes' lips and Holmes screwed his mouth decidedly shut. Top Man went on, obviously enjoying Holmes' reaction. "It would be a shame to waste such a pretty thing." He pressed his thumb between Holmes' lips, but couldn't get any farther than the fronts of Holmes' teeth. "Open up, poppet."

Holmes snorted and jerked his head to the side. Now, on top of the man's rotting mouth, Holmes could taste sewage from his fingers. At least now, he could deduce the man's occupation.

Top Man didn't like being denied. He seized Holmes by the hair and wrenched his face back toward him. "You're awfully rude for a man in your position."

Holmes grunted and wondered if the man would come away with a fistful of his hair, considering how hard he yanked on it to try to make Holmes look at him. Watson called him rude so many times a day that Holmes didn't even bat an eye at the remark. The part that bothered him was that it he could feel Top Man angling his pelvis down against him, and that firm shape pressing into Holmes' stomach made his skin crawl. His moment would come soon; he just had to wait it out. They would have to move him, would…Holmes swallowed thickly…they would have to turn him over, and he could take the opportunity…

Holmes came back to the moment rather rudely and cursed himself for getting distracted. Top Man had slid lower and Holmes squirmed to try to get his own groin away from the pressure inherent in being sat upon. He couldn't plant his feet flat anymore, not with Top Man half sitting on his thighs, and the blackguard was heavy… No worries, not yet. He just had to bide his time. It was okay. Everything was okay, and Top Man was tugging Holmes' shirt from his belt – Watson's shirt, it's Watson's shirt – and no, this was not happening. Holmes choked back a nonspecific sound and twisted his hips down, trying to press into the concrete below him. Top Man followed, and he was rocking ever so subtly, and Holmes could feel it, and he would _not_ react – he would _not_ get hard, he _would not_.

"There, now, poppet." Top Man kept rocking and slipped his hands underneath Holmes' shirt, pressing and stroking his stomach. Mostly to himself, Top Man murmured, "So pale and soft."

Left Arm Man added, "Like a woman. Soft and white like a woman."

Top Man purred in agreement, his fingers skimming lightly over Holmes' abdomen, so gentle that Holmes felt the shudder wrack through him. Holmes hated the betrayal so much that he wasted a few seconds struggling again, trying to pull his arms free, just to stop the man from dragging any more shivers and blushes from him, as if he were a damn wanting virgin woman quivering in anticipation. He wished they would just get on with it so that it could be over and he could go home. To Watson.

Fourth Man came to stand over the lot of them, gazing down with cold eyes. Of them all, Holmes decided he liked Fourth Man best, but only because the man had the decency to appear as what he was – uncaring and borderline evil. Cruel, probably. Holmes could respect a man who didn't bother to conceal his nature; there was something honest about it. Holmes forced his breathing into rhythm as Fourth Man knelt beside them, and without any pretense, went about methodically emptying Holmes' pockets. The other men sat quietly and waited – Fourth Man obviously carried some authority, and none of them argued when he pocketed all of the money that Holmes had won in the ring – Watson's wager, but never mind, Holmes would pay him back.

Fourth Man also unwound Holmes' watch chain, examined that and the timepiece itself, then tucked it into Top Man's trouser pocket, a sickeningly intimate move that Top Man bore with a stony expression. "Be sure to give the boys something for their trouble here."

Top Man nodded, obedient despite his obvious loathing toward Fourth Man. "Are you leaving?" From his voice, he wanted the man to.

"Oh no." Fourth Man retreated and Holmes craned his neck to watch him take a seat on some old packing crates, well away from the scene, like an opera patron to one side of a depraved stage production. "I simply don't want to get in the way." He examined his hands, tutted the dirt there, and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe them clean. "Be careful of him, now. He's a clever man, however 'soft'."

Holmes' stomach lurched and he looked away. Maybe he'd been too quick to muster up a parody of respect for the man's openly deplorable character. Watson was probably nodding in his arm chair by now with a yellow back novel in his lap. Holmes focused on that image for a moment to calm himself.

Top Man seethed for a moment, pointedly not looking at Fourth Man, and then he rucked Holmes' shirt all the way up to his armpits. Holmes flinched and tensed, but there was nothing for it. One of the arm men – he didn't bother looking to see which one – brushed a hand down his neck and then flicked a fingernail over his exposed nipple. Holmes twisted to the side, but the hand followed, and Holmes could feel his skin tingling, his nerves screaming to him that this felt good when he could have sworn that it didn't. Top Man had resumed rocking against him, and between that and the hands, he almost missed the moment when the other arm man unwound the scarf from Holmes' neck.

Too late, Holmes realized that he was about to lose his opportunity to break free. Right Arm Man slung the scarf around his wrist like a noose, and then they were flipping him, one arm immobilized, and shit – he didn't have time to do anything, he hadn't expected this, he hadn't planned – stupid, letting himself get distracted, Watson always yelled at him for getting distracted, pay attention –

"No!" The cry came out of nowhere, and Holmes felt as if he were suffocating, face pressed to cobblestones and the crushing weight of a hand between his shoulder blades, Top Man sitting now on the small of his back, and he suddenly couldn't breathe at all. Holmes realized that he was thrashing, kicking too even though his legs didn't bend in a helpful direction, and he dug the toes of his shoes into the ground for lack of better leverage. They had twisted his arms behind his back before he had even processed the fact that he was on his stomach now in the filth of the alleyway, his own scarf biting into his wrists as they wrenched it tight enough to make his fingers go numb. Someone dragged his waistcoat and Watson's shirt from his shoulders, baring them to the chill night air, and he still couldn't breathe well enough to think straight again. He was panicking, he realized; he couldn't breathe because he was panicking now, and Watson wasn't here to save him this time – Watson was _always_ here when these things happened, always at his back, always –

"Sh-sh-sh…" A hand petted Holmes' hair and he gagged at the stench of the cobblestones under his nose. He could hear his shoes scrabbling against the ground, a faraway echo that only just penetrated the dim rush of sound in his ears. "Good, poppet."

Holmes could smell the rotting breath again – Top Man had his mouth right next to Holmes' ear. He couldn't control the way he struggled in halting bouts of flailing limbs, and he shoved his face into the ground because he preferred the reek of alley cat to that of diseased gums. Pebbles and who-knew-what-else dug into his bare stomach and gouged his collarbones, and Top Man had slithered back, hands splayed across Holmes' dorsal ribcage, then lower, on this hips, and then cupped over his buttocks, and Holmes' stomach heaved at the rank odor invading his nostrils. He choked it back, but it didn't much matter; Top Man was tugging at his belt, which was still buckled, and dipping fingers down past his tail bone, teasing, taunting, and damn him anyway.

"Are you gonna be good for us, poppet?" Top Man gripped Holmes' waist with punishing strength – more bruises, Holmes thought dimly. "Hm? It'd be a shame to have to mar this pretty skin of yours." A single finger inscribed patterns over Holmes' back, and Holmes writhed to avoid it. "Mmm…" Top Man pressed his mouth to the nape of Holmes' neck, and Holmes tried to swallow the whimper that it wrenched from his throat. "Oh, come now, Mister Holmes. I already know you like it…like what I'm doing to you." Top Man snaked a hand around Holmes' waist and down to squeeze between his legs.

Holmes choked over his own whimper and gasped, "Stop! Stop, I'll pay you. Name a price – anything."

"But we don't want your money," Top Man crooned. "Remember?"

"Um…yeah, we do," one of the arm men reminded him.

Top Man snarled, "Quiet!" and then bent low to rub his cheek in Holmes' hair. Holmes flinched and tried to squirm away, a futile effort. "He doesn't actually want us to stop. Do you, Mister Holmes?" Here, he squeezed between Holmes' legs again, too hard, and Holmes whimpered in spite of himself – it _hurt_. "Can't hide _that_, can we."

It took Holmes a moment to understand; he had nearly forgotten about that part of himself, but now…oh god, he had an erection. Top Man started moving his hand, rubbing it harshly, but his grip was firm enough, insistent enough… "No, no – no, I don't want – stop it! Stop!" He bucked upwards, anything to dislodge the hand, but it turned into a slow squirm – he was losing control. There was damnable heat pooling low in his belly, and he didn't want it but his own body had other ideas. He twisted his hands awkwardly, but the scarf was knotted too tight for him to find any give, and it infuriated him no end. "Get the hell off of me! You think I can't find out who you are? You'll hang for this!"

A barrage of chuckles and mean spirited laughter assaulted Holmes' ears, and then one of the arm men sneered, "You don't know a damn thing, Mister Holmes."

Holmes grunted with the effort of trying to throw Top Man off. "I know you two are dock workers. You have calluses consistent with heavy lifting and manual labor, and furthermore, you – " He jutted his chin toward left arm man. " – you have a rope burn on your palm, indicating that you lost your grip on a rope while running up a heavy sail. You also have a tattoo on your left shoulder, an anchor surrounded by a sickle and a star. Your shirt doesn't cover it. And _you_ – " Holmes contorted his neck to glare at right arm man. "You live in White Chapel but you work at a fishery on the docks. You _reek _of it, and the mud on your trouser cuffs indicates that you have a long walk home which takes you through the Cleveland district – I imagine you don't mind, seeing as your proclivities obviously don't limit you to the whores on the square."

Holmes would have gone on, but Top Man suddenly wrenched him up by the hair, bending him backwards with his other arm cinched over Holmes' throat. Holmes struggled for a moment, but when Top Man tightened his arm to cut his airway off completely, he went rigid instead, his eyes darting blankly between the unamused arm men, and then finally to Fourth Man, who sat placidly on his crate with a lit pipe in his hand, just watching. Holmes' back twinged at being contorted into this position but he welcomed the pain because it diminished the unwanted heat elsewhere in his body.

Top Man put his face next to Holmes', close enough that Holmes could see him in his periphery, and hissed, "You really need to learn when to shut up, Mister Holmes."

Holmes' chest heaved, searching for air, but Top Man held him close enough that Holmes' fingers brushed the man's belt, and he could swear he felt the hilt of a knife sheathed there. Carefully, he felt around, his pawing random so that each touch would seem unintentional, and sure enough, a knife handle appeared under his fingers. He tested it and found a snap holding it in place in its sheath, and dug his fingernails in around the snap to open it.

Top Man moved so slowly that Holmes jumped when a hand closed over his on the knife hilt. "Looking for something, poppet?" he growled. Holmes froze, his eyes widening both in unexpected fear, and lack of oxygen. "I think that what you need is a little bit further to the right." He dragged Holmes' hands in said direction and pressed his crotch into them. "Isn't it."

Holmes sputtered and twisted his hands away, only to be released a second later. He fell forward and smacked into the cobblestones, though luckily, he avoided breaking his nose even though he wasn't capable of catching himself. Air rushed past his abused throat to cool his seared lungs and he gasped in a miserable heap on the ground, willing spots out of his vision. Top Man grabbed him by the hips and dragged him up a few inches, far enough to get his arms under Holmes' body to work open his belt. Holmes pressed his forehead to the cool ground, panting harshly, and barely flinched when his heard the whir of his belt whipping free of their loops. He opened his eyes as Top Man tossed it to Right Arm Man with the order, "Shut him up."

Holmes shied when Right Arm Man moved to shove something in his mouth, only to have Top Man drag his head up by the hair again. His neck hurt already from being choked, and having his head yanked back made him feel as if his bones were grinding together. He heard himself yelp and wondered how many colors the bruise would turn. Then some rank piece of cloth was shoved into his mouth, and Left Arm Man used his cravat to tie it in place, and Holmes allowed a stifled sob to escape, safe behind the disgusting, diseased fabric where no one would hear it. They let go of his head and he chewed on the gag, the corners of the cravat biting into the corners of his mouth, but he couldn't get the thing off, not even when he raked his face over the ground, trying to snag the cravat on a corner of a cobblestone. The taste of it against his tongue reminded him of the sewage from Top Man's fingers – foul like rotting fish, probably crawling with filth – he was going to throw up, he realized. He was going to throw up and then choke on his own vomit.

Holmes' vision swam as he tried desperately not to lose control of his rebellious stomach. He needed something to focus on, something not this. If he choked to death here, alone, not on a case, all because of his smart mouth and his cocky attitude and his prowess in a damn boxing ring, Watson would never forgive him. He just had to make it home – make it home and sit in his chair across from Watson, pick the book up off his lap and mark his place in it, just…

Focus on something, anything. Holmes didn't want to remember this the way he remembered everything else, in excruciating detail for the rest of his life. His flickering gaze found Left Arm Man's shoes and he narrowed his concentration to those, to the color of the leather, the creases across the toes, the ragged soles, the cracked edges – he could extrapolate what his footprints would look like, so he did, and he imagined every notch and dispersion of the man's weight so that he didn't have to notice when Top Man dragged his trousers down to his knees and pressed that hardness against his back, driving Holmes' hips into the gritty ground, grit and pebbles raking against his own…why was he hard too? He didn't like this, he didn't want it – it didn't feel good at all, so why –

Shoes. He had Left Arm Man's down, so he moved onto Right Arm Man. Military boots – that would narrow it down. And cuff links – Right Arm Man had his knuckles braced on the ground for balance where he crouched. Holmes could see his cuff links. Silver, inscribed, tarnished, focus on the monogram – it was too dark to make out the letters, so Holmes memorized the patterns in the dull swirls of unpolished, poorly kept silver instead. Every whorl, every degree of discoloration, every bead and speckle – focus –

"Pretty little thing," Top Man crooned.

Holmes felt his carefully distracted concentration shatter as he startled and cringed, shoulders tensed. There were fingers prodding at him, between his buttocks, rubbing and stroking and pressing as if they actually expected him to relax and allow them inside.

"Come on, poppet. Open up for me."

Shoes – shoes, where – there. Shoes. Military boots and monogrammed silver cufflinks.

"Relax, precious. So soft…make you feel as good I do. Come, now."

Holmes shied when Top Man forced the tip of his finger inside, his chest stuttering as he fought not to sob outright. This shouldn't matter – it was just flesh. He didn't care what happened to his body – Watson observed that all the time, yelled at him for it – It was just a power play. They wanted to humiliate him, it didn't mean _any_thing. It didn't mean anything that Holmes' heart rate shot up and his breathing turned ragged, and he still wanted to throw up but he couldn't risk it with the gag in his mouth. He wished Top Man would stop stroking him, though – he didn't enjoy this, whatever his flesh indicated. But there were roiling waves of heat coursing through his loins now, and when he squirmed, he couldn't tell if it was away or toward, and the finger had penetrated deeper – apparently, he had relaxed after all, because it didn't hurt as much as he had thought it would, and shoes – look at the shoes and the cufflinks and then go home to Watson and sit in the chair and smoke a pipe. Just look at the shoes and the silver, and don't bother with the rest of it.

"God, you're tight." Top Man licked a stripe up the back of Holmes' neck and then nibbled behind his ear. "Gonna feel so good. So hot inside."

Holmes bit down on the gag and blew snot from his nose because it was his only airway and he needed to breathe. He heard sounds like a broken puppy but he couldn't tell where they were coming from, and worse, he couldn't see the shoes anymore because his vision had streaked. Must have been the puddle under his cheek, getting grimy water in his eyes. Must have been. He twisted and whined when the second finger forced its way into him, and it hurt again because his muscles clamped down and Top Man didn't stop to let him relax this time. His fingers wound around the ends of his scarf, clenched tight and tangled. It burned – his arse burned and Top Man kept thrusting the fingers into him. Something disconnected in Holmes' body because the next thing he knew, a different kind of heat seared through him and he cried out around the sodden cloth in his mouth, a muffled, strangled sound. He didn't understand why that felt good, or why he tensed and shook for a moment, or why his hips jogged forward into Top Man's other hand. It wasn't good – it wasn't good at all, but he squirmed anyway.

Top Man made a soft noise that obviously came accompanied by a grin of some sort. "Look at that, boys. Look at him squirm."

Holmes choked back a dejected moan and shoved his nose into the cobblestones, shame coloring his face and shoulders in a palpable wave. All he'd done was win a boxing match; it wasn't his fault that they had placed a moron's bet. When he peeled his face up off the ground, desperate for something to distract himself with, he found knees blocking his view of the alley. The arm men had moved closer, and the moment Holmes noticed them, they started touching him too – soft, light, combing fingers through his hair and tracing the lines of his face, his shoulders, his lips.

Top Man finally stopped what he was doing behind Holmes, and Holmes went limp with premature relief. He barely took note of the squabbling above him until Top Man told one of them, "You had the last one. It's his turn." And then someone seized the knot at the back of his head and yanked on it long enough to work a knife against Holmes' scalp and snap the gag free.

Holmes choked and spit the wadded cloth from his mouth, sucking in greedy gulps of air, convinced for one insane moment that it must be over. He twisted his shoulders, murky plans forming in his mind as he waited for someone to cut the bindings on his wrists too. A tiny part of him was trying to explain that it wasn't that easy – that he was losing it, and that he had to stop hoping after stupid things like that, but Holmes couldn't hang onto the rational bit. All he knew was that he could breathe again, and that Top Man was no longer doing things to make his stomach simmer and his body twitch against his will.

The knife that appeared at Holmes' throat didn't register at first; nor did the weight of Top Man pressing against his back, not until the blade pricked against the soft hollow above his clavicles and Top Man's voice hissed in his ear. "If you bite him, I'll slit your throat."

Holmes struggled to make his mind work, trying to wrap his head around that tiny rational part of himself that screamed at him in Watson's voice to pay attention, and figure it out, stay in the moment, deduce… He heard fabric rustle in front of him and glanced up as Right Arm Man undid his fly buttons. The fishery worker – the one whose putrid handkerchief had just been shoved in Holmes' mouth.

Top Man pressed the blade harder against Holmes' adams apple and growled, "Ask for it."

The knife pressed like a pinpoint of clarity to Holmes' skin. He felt his eyes go round and wide as Right Arm Man pulled out a disgusting length of hard cock while Left Arm Man sulked at being excluded. No, Holmes thought. Nnonono…

Top Man seized Holmes' chin in a brutal grip and Holmes screwed his face up, jaw clenched, eyes shut. "Ask him! Or I kill you right now."

Can't die here, Holmes thought, his mind garbled. Can't…Watson…just get through it and go back to Watson.

A tiny, disbelieving sound tore from Holmes' throat as Top Man let go of his chin and Right Arm Man cupped his jaw in an almost tender manner. Holmes could smell him – rotting fish and putrefaction – and he swallowed rapidly to keep his stomach settled. That thing was right in front of him, at eye level. It smelled like chemicals and animal musk, and fish carcasses and the Thames on a bad day...inches away form his face, oh god…calluses on the fingers, forty two buttons, silver cufflinks, footprints…

Holmes gagged and tried to duck his head away as Top Man forced his legs apart and rubbed his free hand over the backs of Holmes' thighs; the other hand still clutched the knife, fist braced on the ground with the blade pointed up at Holmes' throat so that Holmes had to hold his head craned up at an unnatural angle to avoid it piercing him. He didn't even entertain the possibility of letting himself fall onto it – it never even crossed his mind, because if he did, then Lestrade would call Watson to identify his body, and he couldn't let Watson see his dead body, not over something as inconsequential as a stupid lost bet.

The pad of a thumb grazed the corner of Holmes' mouth and he opened his eyes, struggling to look up at Right Arm Man, past the cock that he held steady in front of Holmes' mouth. Top Man was already nudging at him from behind, propped above him like a weight looming down even though he wasn't laying fully on top of him. He pictured Watson again, sitting skewed in his arm chair, oblivious and asleep and rumpled in his fine clothes, book on his lap, the fire dying down at his feet. Watson, waiting for him to come home. Watson, who had already lost a wife and had barely recovered from realizing that he hadn't lost Holmes too, who had moved back into Baker Street the moment Holmes asked, who slept innocently in bed next to him because it was safer that way, because they could keep an eye on each other if they were in the same room, because Watson got that look on his face now whenever Holmes went out alone, as if he thought Moriarty might take Holmes from him again, and leave him with nothing at all this time. Watson who had suddenly stopped complaining when Holmes stole his clothes or pissed off the landlady or fouled the air with his pipe smoke. Watson…

Holmes gazed up, terrified and undone, his mind in tatters except for the memory of the face of that one person waiting for him. Always waiting for him, even when everyone else told him that Holmes was dead, able to wait only because there was no body that time. This time, there would be. If he didn't survive, Watson would have a body this time, and Holmes couldn't stomach the thought of doing that to him.

So he asked for it.


	2. Chapter 2

Watson woke slowly, mostly because of the crick in his neck. It dimly registered that he had fallen asleep in his chair; his bad leg attested to that. The fire had died down to deep red embers and a smoky odor permeated the air. That and something foul. Watson groaned as he forced himself further into consciousness. Holmes must have opened a window; the whole room reeked of a garbage flow on the Thames. The rustling near the sitting room door dragged him further out of his haze of unconsciousness, and he listened with half an ear as the familiar footsteps of a weary Holmes slogged across the carpet. There was an odd note to the footsteps, however; they dragged a bit more than usual, and to an uneven cadence. He must have been there for several minutes already; Watson had a hazy recollection of starting at the sound of the door opening down on the ground floor, and of keys falling to the floor in the foyer. Watson could also hear Holmes breathing, long pants that shuddered from his lungs, as if he had sprinted across London and only just stopped running, and was furthermore trying to hide his winded state.

Watson sat up in a rush, book tumbling from his lap and sloughing off his knees. Holmes caught it with deft fingers before it hit the floor and Watson watched him blearily in the half light of the dying fire, too many shadows to discern anything other than that Holmes had thumbed Watson's place in the book and was drawing something off of the mantle to mark it with. "Holmes? What are you – god, it's _you_ that smells."

Holmes paused in his movements long enough to apparently contemplate a number of his usual witty retorts – something about a case or a fight, or the scent of victory, or a tale of an unlikely adventure that accosted him on the way home, something grand and embellished and of his own imagining, like that damn jar of fruit flies he had once collected – but no words came from him. Holmes sort of stuttered in place in front of the fire and then finished his bookmarking. Then he folded the tome closed and set it on the mantle without turning around.

This odd behavior unsettled Watson and he leaned across the arm of his chair to turn up the wick on his reading lamp. He managed a glance at his pocket watch as he straightened, which he had set on the table before undoing his collar to relax earlier that evening. It was past three in the morning. "Good god, Holmes. Where have you been? It's nearly dawn."

Holmes' voice came out as a scratchy rasp when he softly replied, "Walking home."

"Walking?" Watson blinked, head canted to the side. It wasn't like Holmes to be so subdued, not even in his tone. At least, not subdued in that particular manner, as if he feared being struck for too insolent or brazen a sound – like the child of too-stern parents, stifling the noise of his own voice. "I thought you were at the ring tonight."

"I was," Holmes said, still hoarse.

"And you _walked_ all that way home? Whatever for?" It was easily seven miles from the Punch Bowl back to Baker Street. No wonder Holmes was only just getting in.

Holmes shrugged, began to pick at his lip, and then glanced at his fingers before he dropped them back to his side, as if he were startled to have found them there.

Watson narrowed his eyes, his gaze critical in a medical way. "I say, old man. Are you alright?" Then Watson's thoughts darkened. "Have you been at the needle?"

Holmes stepped to the side, toward his own armchair which sat across from Watson, his gait stiff. "I assure you, Doctor, I am quite sober." The mockery of addressing Watson by his title did not carry to his voice.

That tone again, Watson thought; the deathly gentleness of it unnerved him. Just to break the odd silence, he snapped, "Well then, either sit down, or tell me what you're on about."

Holmes wavered a bit on his feet, which was not all that out of the ordinary for Holmes in one of his drug-addled bleak moods, but things had been going well lately, and Holmes had just stated that he had not taken one of his many chemicals; it was not something he tended to lie about, no matter that they fought over it so often when he _did_ indulge. And Holmes didn't sit down; he merely stood there with his back to Watson, shoulders tense and yet settled back, staring at the chair.

"Holmes." Watson sat forward a bit, the better to observe his flat mate. "Holmes, sit down and tell me what's going on in your head. You're worrying me."

"I do apologize, old chap." Holmes continued to regard the chair with an odd sort of wary discomfort. After a moment, he seemed to snap himself back to some semblance of normalcy, and he fumbled in his pockets for a cigarette. When he found none there – where, Watson wondered, was his cigarette case? – Holmes patted down the mantle in search of a stray cigarette left lying about. It was only after he found one and drew it to his lips that Watson noticed the way his hands shook. Around the cigarette in his mouth, Holmes added ever-too-politely, "And I prefer to stand, thank you. I am not tired."

"Dear god." Watson was on his feet before he even registered the protest of his old wound. A grunt of pain left him, quickly suppressed, and then he had his hand on Holmes' shoulder, trying to peer past it to catch a glimpse of Holmes' face. "Holmes, what's happened? Are you ill? Injured?" A few scratches and the shadows of bruising caught Watson's eye in the brief flare of the match; the room was too dim for him to see much clearly, but Watson immediately thought _concussion_. It would explain the strange behavior, to be sure. "Come down to my practice room, Holmes. Let me clean you up." He tugged gently at Holmes' arm.

Holmes tensed and twisted away from him, his movements unsteady as he stepped to put his chair between them. "It's nothing, Watson. Don't trouble yourself." He shook the match out and flicked it into the grate.

Watson crossed his arms, defiant and righteously indignant now that he imagined he had solved the mystery behind Holmes' behavior. It offended his sensibilities as a doctor to let him retreat now that Watson believed him to be injured from the fight. "I am troubling myself whether you approve or not. Now either come with me, or I will bring my bag up here and dog you about the room until you surrender. I won't have you bleeding to death of internal injuries, or lapsing into a coma from getting your head knocked soundly about by some brute of a pugilist."

"I am not concussed."

"_You_ are not a doctor, Holmes. Come. Now."

Holmes shook his head. He wasn't normally so reluctant, not with Watson, not in years. "I am fine, Doctor. It's fine."

Watson's eyes narrowed of their own accord. "No," he countered simply. "Holmes, you're acting strangely." His ire at Holmes stubborn refusals bled off until only a sick worry remained. "What's wrong? Tell me what's wrong."

Inexplicably, Holmes refused again, shaking his head harder this time. If Watson didn't know him so well, he would be tempted to ascribe a peculiar sort of desperation to Holmes' denials at this point. "I am tired. This can wait until morning."

"You are never tired, Holmes." Watson's crossed arms loosened and dropped. "You avoid sleep like the plague."

Irrationally, Holmes insisted, "I wish to go to bed."

Watson blinked at the thready waver of Holmes' voice, and that alone nearly caused him to cave, to let Holmes go. It was also, paradoxically, what hardened his resolve. Something was very wrong. With an infinite gentleness, Watson stepped closer, one hand outstretched in a silent plea, until Holmes had no choice but to either move away again or look at it. "Holmes. Tell me what's happened. Please tell me."

Holmes stared the hand as if he weren't sure what to make of it, as if he might not even know to whom it belonged, and then his eyes flickered up to meet Watson's, his gaze sluggish. "I lost your money."

Watson's brows fought to pull down along with the rest of his suddenly frowning face, but he kept them level. "My money? This is about money?"

In too much of a rush, Holmes promised, "I'll pay you back."

"No," Watson replied, appalled. "Holmes, it was a gamble. If you lost the fight, you hardly need – "

"I didn't lose the fight!" Holmes exclaimed with an irrational degree of anger. "I lost your _money_."

Watson stared at him, his hand still raised between them. "What, you were mugged?"

Holmes skittered back a step and took to scouring his fingernails, the cigarette dangling precariously between two fingers. Finally, after Watson had written off the possibility of getting a response, Holmes mumbled, "No. They gave it back. But Top Man has my watch; he'll probably pawn it, so I can get that back in a few days too. It's okay."

Watson's eyes widened a fraction as he silently mouthed _Top Man_ into the otherwise silent room. Just for clarity's sake, he asked, "They took your watch and your cigarette case – " He was guessing on the second one, but since Holmes didn't seem to have it anymore, he considered it a safe bet – "but they gave the winnings back?"

Holmes's eyes skittered up to pierce Watson's again, only for a moment, and then they dropped off to the side as if the sight of Watson's bewilderment had burned him. Then he gave a halting nod, his gaze caught in the periphery of the room.

"Why would they do that?" Watson demanded.

A nonspecific shudder coursed through Holmes' frame where he stood on visibly uncertain feet, cigarette forgotten in his hand as it dropped ash on the carpet. "Said it's only right to pay…to pay the…"

The helpless gesture that Holmes finished with didn't really tell Watson anything, but the rest of it clicked somewhere in his mind. He felt the urge to swallow as his nostrils drew in, eyelids lowered in a farce of languidity over his slackening face. It was all he could manage to breathe, "Oh my god."

"I'll pay you back," Holmes insisted again hollowly, as if fixating on that one point were keeping him sane. "I shouldn't have left it."

Watson was shaking his head by now, horrified and furious in a remote way that he could hardly quantify. In a shaky voice, he replied, "Holmes, I don't give a damn about the money."

"It's my fault it's gone. They gave it back, and – "

"Hang the damn money!" Watson roared. He immediately regretted it.

Holmes startled backwards and thumped against the wall next to the fireplace. "But the rent," he quibbled. "We have to pay the rent."

Watson didn't know why that, of all things, should finally bring a sting to his eyes, but it did. "God, Holmes. We're not poor anymore – you didn't lose our rent. And even if you had, it wouldn't matter."

"But it's your money."

Watson covered his mouth with one trembling hand and blinked to clear his vision. He would not succumb, not here, not now. When he was certain he could speak without the thickness marring his words, Watson let his hand fall away and merely said, "There is no debt between us."

Holmes' eyes wandered aimlessly around the sitting room to Watson's right. "And I ruined your shirt." He plucked restless fingers at the stained and muddied fabric he still wore, noticing the cigarette again in the process. It had burned nearly all the way down and he stared at it in confusion, as if he didn't recall lighting it. Then he dismissed it, tossing it into the grate in a nearly normal gesture of impatience, and met Watson's eyes as he usually would. "At least allow me to reimburse the cost of your shirt."

"Fine," Watson agreed, if only to forestall any more fits of irrationality. "But if you try to convince me that a shirt costs fifty pounds, so help me, Holmes…"

Holmes nodded and attempted a quirky smile. "We'll go to the tailor together so there will be no room for deception."

"Very well," Watson whispered. He continued to stare at Holmes, however, seriously disconcerted by his oscillating behavior, and abruptly said, "Allow me to treat you."

Holmes' tenuous grasp on himself seemed to fade as his posture folded inward. He maintained eye contact, though; Watson considered that a point in his favor.

"You could have injuries that you're unaware of," Watson pressed gently, his mind attuned to the wariness in Holmes' expression. "Please, let me make certain you're alright."

Holmes' eyes lowered, flickered back up to Watson's for a split second, and then meandered away altogether. But he nodded once he couldn't see Watson's expression anymore.

It was not possible for Watson to contain his sigh of relief, but after letting it out, he immediately forced his mind into medical contours, for Holmes' sake. If he didn't keep his head about this, he couldn't effectively tend to Holmes' injuries. He needed to maintain his cool exterior long enough for that, at least. With manufactured neutrality, Watson enjoined, "Let's go to the washroom. You need a bath."

Holmes nodded, but he made no move to leave his corner behind the armchair, or the patch of wall that seemed to be supporting a majority of his weight. When Watson sidestepped the chair and reached out, Holmes didn't react to the hand that grasped his shoulder, so Watson tugged him gently forward. He didn't know what to make of it when Holmes twitched and looked at Watson's collar, and then Watson suddenly had an armful of the man. It took him precious seconds to realize what was going on, and then he grabbed Holmes back and crushed him close. The force of the embrace had to hurt, but all Holmes did was lean into him and wrap his arms around Watson's torso, drawing fistfuls of Watson's shirt into his fingers to anchor his hands against Watson's spine, his face buried under Watson's chin. Holmes' chest heaved once in an enormous sigh and it seemed like the tension finally drained from him with the force of that tattered exhale, as if it were finally alright now.

That nearly undid Watson altogether. He squeezed his eyes shut, ignoring the stench of alley filth and of what must have been other men that clung to Holmes' body, and ducked his head in against Holmes' shoulder. He had to hunch a little bit due to their height disparity, but it hardly mattered. He could feel Holmes shaking, and then to his mounting horror, Holmes began to speak, his lips pressed to Watson's starched collar. He apologized for clinging to Watson like a distraught maiden, and then he protested when Watson excused it. A few mumbles about shoes came out next, followed by an incomprehensible string of what must have been observations of his attackers – "There were forty two buttons, Watson. I'm certain there were. I marked it." And then he finally babbled that he hadn't understood what they were doing, and he thought it was just a mugging, and he'd taunted them before he comprehended the truth. He lamented in the third person that Watson would be so mad at him for egging them on because he never knew when to shut up, as if Watson weren't right there, wrapped halfway around him.

That was when it truly hit Watson, how appalling this crime really was. Somewhere between Holmes' mumblings that he hadn't understood their intentions, and that he'd tried not to react but he didn't know how to stop it – somewhere in the midst of that, It became clear to Watson that not only had they attacked and brutalized his very dearest friend, but the bastards had taken his innocence too, in every sense of the word.

Watson felt his own chest hitch and he squeezed the breath right out of Holmes just to stop him from saying more. He couldn't hear this right now; he couldn't listen, and then stop himself from going out like a madman to beat someone to death with his bare hands and then empty his revolver into a cold body just to sooth the last dregs of his temper. Watson didn't know how many there had been, only that there had been more than one, and he felt impotent with rage over knowing what they had done to his friend – to Sherlock Holmes – to make him come home like this and throw himself into Watson's arms like a child too traumatized to cry. Because Holmes wasn't crying; he was shaking and mumbling, and his breathing was ragged and chopped, but Watson could feel the dryness of Holmes' cheeks against the skin of his own neck. Some pack of blackguards had grievously mistreated his friend, and Watson would decidedly wreak his revenge for it, but not yet. Right now, all Watson could do was swear over and over, "I'll see them hang, Holmes," in a voice that could not have been steady or hale to save his life. "My word, I'll see them all dead."

The worst part for Watson had to be that he didn't think Holmes was even listening to him; he just seemed so relieved to be there, breathing in Watson's scent and clutching the solidity of Watson's shirt in his trembling hands. Holmes even said at some point that it was all he'd come home for, because Watson was waiting by the fire with his book. And then he stiffened and forcefully asserted, "I couldn't let you find my body, Watson. I had to let them – I couldn't let you find it – you'd have to bury me if you found it." And then he apologized for that too, for making Watson care about him enough that it would matter if Holmes died.

Watson had no idea how he managed to pry Holmes off of him and then get him down the stairs to the washroom; it all seemed a blur after Watson himself began to quake and threaten all sorts of cruelties if Holmes dared to apologize for such a thing ever again. He left Holmes standing in the middle of the gaslight-illuminated room while he tripped back up the stairs to retrieve clothes and a blanket, his medical bag, and Holmes' dressing gown.

Holmes had gone silent and still by the time Watson returned, and he didn't argue when Watson turned his back and ordered him to strip. Watson slipped the dressing gown over Holmes' shoulders himself without looking away from the ceiling. He had already seen far more than he wished in the harsh light: the ligature marks on Holmes' throat, the fingerprints bruised into his jaw, the angry chafe marks on his wrists, the blood crusted in the corners of his mouth that led Watson to believe that he'd been gagged for at least part of it…the welted mark where his neck met his shoulder, so like those left by teeth…

Without speaking, Watson shoved Holmes' clothes into a sack to save for evidence, pointedly not thinking about the fact that Holmes scarf and belt were conspicuously absent and that woolen fibers would leave just such marks on Holmes' wrists if pulled too tight. He set the entire bundle out in the foyer, then drew a shallow breath to fortify himself before he returned to the washroom and shut the door.

Watson failed on his first attempt to call Holmes' name, and then croaked out, "Here, old boy," instead. Holmes barely met his eyes as he turned, and then he stood without complaint while Watson pumped water into the wash basin and ran a wet cloth over the scruff of stubble on Holmes' cheeks, frightfully passive, one hand closed over the collar of the dressing gown to hold it shut. Watson was accustomed to the unending activity of Holmes' limbs, to the ever-changing, subtle expressiveness of his face; he didn't know quite what to do about the way Holmes merely stood there, still as a statue, his eyes roving at random over bits of Watson's figure – just tiny, flickering movements so languid that Watson diagnosed shock without thinking. When he pressed the cloth against Holmes' neck, Holmes swayed with the pressure, giving ground without realizing it, loose and detached and hardly himself anymore.

It startled Watson when Holmes laid his fingers on Watson's cheek, and even more so when Holmes admonished, "You shouldn't get so worked up, old man."

Watson swallowed, his face crinkling as he averted his gaze and raised his own fingers to feel the wetness that Holmes had sought to touch. "I'm sorry, Holmes. I'm very…" He didn't want to say _upset_ because he didn't want Holmes to start apologizing again, so he eventually cleared his throat and settled on, "I'm very angry."

Holmes met his gaze, brown eyes soft in the gas lights. Very quietly, he inquired, "At me?"

"_For_ you," Watson corrected in like manner.

"Ah." Holmes' hand drifted back to his side and his gaze went with it. "I understand. I should be very angry too, if it were you."

Watson nodded because he didn't trust himself to speak, then busied himself at wringing the cloth out in clean water. With his eyes trained on the contents of his medical bag, Watson said, "I'll need to examine you now. You may want to sit." Then a sickening thought occurred to him and he squinched his eyes shut to ask, "_Can _you sit?"

A pregnant pause, and then Holmes flatly replied, "I would prefer not to."

Watson shook his head in denial, but he had already known… "Kneel, then. You're exhausted. I don't want you to pass out." He was going to kill them. Slowly. He was going to feed them their own manhoods on a gilded plate.

Behind him, he heard Holmes' bare feet shifting on the floor, and then the faint rustle of cloth as he sank gingerly down. His voice floated up a moment later, subdued and yet reassuring in tone. "It's not that bad, Watson, I promise. They were gentle in that regard, I think. Top Man eased the way with his fingers. I do recall reading that it's the proper way to prepare for such things."

"God…" Watson stifled himself in his palm, the other braced on the dry sink as an unexpected wave of nausea momentarily overwhelmed him. It passed quickly and he forced himself to respond, "That was considerate of them."

"Indeed. Watson, I beg you, contain yourself. I'm fine."

Watson breathed through his mouth even though it was covered in fingers. "I know."

Politely puzzled now, Holmes asked, "Is this still your anger?"

"Yes, it is still my anger," Watson ground out. He felt as if pebbles had been shoved down his throat. "It is my most profound anger."

"You do have quite the temper, Mother Hen."

"I shall have to try harder to contain it, then." Watson swiped the heel of his hand over his cheeks and then cleared his nose before he picked up his medical bag. He kept Holmes in his periphery as he turned and knelt in front of him, reaching back to bring the wash basin to the floor as well. He was aware of Holmes studying him, and he suspected that he looked a right blotchy mess – nothing like a man in a foul temper. Holmes said nothing more of it, however, and for that, Watson was grateful. "Just bare your shoulders for now. You may keep your lower half covered."

Holmes didn't obey right away, and Watson made himself look to determine the reason. Holmes had managed to sit mostly on his left hip, both of his legs curled up to one side, but he had his head bowed so that Watson couldn't read the expression on his face, and his knuckles had gone white where they held the dressing closed over his throat,

Watson whet his mouth before murmuring, "Let me." He watched his own hands come up as if they didn't belong to him, and he worked the fabric gently from Holmes' fingers, his thumb rubbing a soothing circle on the back of Holmes' hand as he did so.

Eventually, the cloth came away and Watson fumbled against Holmes' subdued and yet persistent reluctance. His hands posed no true resistance as he sought to keep them raised against Watson's ministrations, and yet they were a definite hindrance. Watson had to keep enjoining him to trust him, and he promised over and over not to hurt him or to comment on any of the marks he might find. What finally made Holmes relent was Watson's muddled assurance that he thought no less of Holmes for this – that he was only glad that Holmes had come home to him afterwards. Obvious shame colored Holmes' cheeks at that, but he glanced up regardless to read the truth of the statement on Watson's face. It sufficed; he allowed Watson to lay his hands aside and brush the dressing gown down his arms to gather in the crooks of his elbows. It left Holmes swallowing convulsively, however, and he refused to look away from the bathtub fixtures that he had trained his eyes on, his breathing forced and uneven.

Watson focused his attentions on the bite mark first because it offended him the most at the moment. Such a trophy should be borne after making love in the passionate manner, not as a blatant reminder of such a depraved assault. "How many were there?"

Holmes ducked his head a fraction and Watson felt Holmes' breath stir his hair. "Four."

"You called one of them Top Man." He didn't want to ask these things, to hear the answers, and yet he needed them all the same. "He took your watch. He was the ring leader?"

"No," Holmes replied softly. "Fourth Man was the leader. He gave my watch to them as payment."

Watson bit his lip for a moment and reached for the antiseptic. "Describe him. Fourth Man."

"I…cannot." Holmes grasped Watson's sleeve such that Watson doubted he was aware of it. "He remained in the shadows for most of it. To watch. I believe he was a gentleman. He wore richer clothes than the others." As an afterthought, Holmes mumbled, "And he didn't smell as foul."

Watson nodded and forced back the sickening knot in his throat. "You say he paid the others for their trouble. They targeted you?"

"They knew my name."

Watson sniffed, but only to keep his airways clear. Thankfully, his hands had ceased their trembling so that he could continue to treat his friend.

"I was unforgivably arrogant," Holmes said out of the blue. "I saw the three behind me, but I failed to notice the one in front, in the alleyway. I wasn't paying attention."

"Holmes, no part of this is your fault."

"You are always telling me to take care, and I did not."

Watson paused his ministrations to cup Holmes' jaw and force his head up. He ignored the way Holmes sought not to cringe, studiously avoiding Watson gaze all the same. "Holmes, desist this instant. This was not for your lack of care. You were sought out on purpose. They knew you."

"I should ever be prepared," Holmes countered, blinking off to the side. His voice carried a vicious undercurrent of self recrimination. "I should be vigilant. I know better."

"They _knew_ you."

"Yes," Holmes breathed. But it didn't seem to convince him of anything other than that he should expect to be a target of the sort of men he hunted.

Watson released him, his stomach churning with emotions he couldn't even begin to put words to. And he a writer. Since he couldn't seem to convince Holmes not to blame himself, and he didn't want to start any sort of argument over it, Watson backtracked. "Tell me about Top Man. What did he look like, what's his profession, where does he live?"

Holmes shuddered and shrank a bit under Watson's hands, which were once again absently cataloguing injuries and marks that should not have marred his pale skin.

As a sort of afterthought, Watson remarked, "From the bruising, you've probably suffered some damage to your right kidney. You can expect to find blood in your urine for a week or so."

Holmes grunted in acknowledgement. It was nothing he hadn't dealt with before, actually; he managed to do himself serious injury on an almost monthly basis, between cases, chemical experiments, boxing, and just general Holmes-iness. "I am not surprised."

At some point, Watson realized that he had stopped treating Holmes, and was now merely touching him lightly here and there: some fingers on Holmes' elbow, a brush of the hand past Holmes' cheek, an incomprehensible dance of their fingers, which never made it to the point of interlacing or gripping, and yet they still interacted in a vaguely comforting manner. To Watson, at least. It was the flinch the Holmes gave – and obviously tried to gloss over – at Watson's hand on his face that alerted Watson to what he was doing, and he quickly drew back. He would have preferred not to feel shame at what he had been doing, but the heat and the color to his cheeks came anyway. After clearing his throat in a hasty, transparent manner, Watson reminded him, "Top Man. Tell me everything you know of him, Holmes. Now, while the memory is still fresh."

Holmes looked down, his lower lip caught between his teeth. If Watson hadn't known him as well as he did, he may have been moved to call the sheen over Holmes' irises a film of unshed tears. But even now, Watson could not imagine Holmes actually crying, even in prelude form. Almost desperate, Holmes breathed, "Watson, I beg of you. Must I go over it again just to satisfy your curiosity?"

"I swear to you, Holmes, I would much rather go on to the grave never speaking of this again. But I cannot." Watson leaned forward in hopes of catching Holmes' eye; he failed, but implored anyway, "Tell me, Holmes. If I can find them – "

"No." Holmes dragged his gaze up to Watson's just long enough to pierce it, and then shook his head as an excuse to look away again. "You will not go after them. You would only get yourself killed." He hesitated, seeming uncertain as to whether he should add to that, and then whispered, "Or worse."

Watson stared hard at the top of Holmes' head, hair askew and matted and in bad need of a thorough washing, then snapped, "I must do something. I cannot sit idle while you suffer."

"You are doing enough already." Holmes murmured, his softened tone a marked contrast to Watson's rapidly escalating one.

Watson wished he could tell if it were emotion that so gentled Holmes' voice, or his swollen and bruised throat. "You do _not_ intend to let this go." It was a flat statement – nearly an order, at that.

"If there is anything to be done, then let Scotland Yard do it. Not you."

"Then you consent to allow me to send a wire in the morning?" Watson pressed. "To bring Lestrade here? You will speak to him?" Many in Holmes' place would not, Watson knew; the indignity could bind a man's tongue like little else. It would hurt Watson to know that Holmes would rather confide in a casual acquaintance than in him, but this was not about Watson's comfort or feelings; he would make himself be content as long as someone knew, because the alternative was to have no one looking for the fiends, and that was not something that Watson could stomach. When Holmes appeared indisposed to answer, Watson asked, "Someone else, perhaps? Gregson? Jones? Name him, and I will see to it that he comes."

"Watson…"

Watson's next plea came out a veritable hiss, and not a very solicitous one at that, but he could not amend his tone. "It will be one of us, Holmes. Me, or a Yard man, I care not which. But you will not allow this – this assault on your person to go unaddressed. Do you understand me? I won't allow it."

"I don't – " Holmes cut himself off and winced down at his fingers as if he had just done something painful with them.

Watson could feel his entire demeanor gentle. "Holmes, look at me." He extended a hand but stopped himself before he touched Holmes' face.

A pair of unnaturally bright brown eyes contemplated those digits for a moment, and then Holmes shied from them. "Don't."

Watson closed his fingers around his own palm and withdrew it. "Finish the thought, Holmes. What don't you want?"

"I don't – " Holmes stopped again, visibly biting his tongue, and picked at his knuckles. His voice unbearably softer this time, he finished, "They'll think… Watson, imagine…what they would think."

"They would think that you were alone and outnumbered," Watson replied stonily.

"No," Holmes countered, his voice hollowed like an old tree stump. "They would not."

Watson gave a minute shake of his head and leaned closer, if only to hear Holmes better when his voice seemed so quiet that a gust of wind could have occluded it. "I know that this is not easy, old man. It is embarrassing – mortifying, even. But that is no reason to let it go unspoken." Watson hesitated, hoping for some sort of reaction, but he received none. "Is it your reputation you fear for?"

Holmes made a noncommittal sound and grew to fidget while obviously trying to remain still. "It was not…could not have been as bad as you imagine, Watson. It was nothing. Now please, let it go."

Watson bristled. "I will not. Holmes, I can see how bad it was; I have no need of imagining worse."

"Just _stop_!"

The abrupt fury startled Watson, but less than it would have in a different context. And indeed, Holmes seemed surprised at the edge to his own voice; he deflated as quickly as he had tensed to yell. After taking a measured breath, Watson pointed out, "You have trusted me this far already. Let me act, Holmes. If you cannot bring yourself to speak to an inspector, then allow me to know the details so that I may record all of your observations and pass them on. I can say that I have a gentleman patient who is leery of involving the Yard. They need never know your name or connect you to this in any way."

"You are lying," Holmes stated flatly. "They would have to know eventually, if not from you, then from _them_."

"It would not be made public," Watson insisted. "Holmes, I know you are frightened – "

"I am not frightened!"

Watson's protests died with a small series of uncertain nods, and then he bent himself to cleaning the grit from Holmes' left hand, from his abraded knuckles. He knew damn well that his next words were meant to be a manipulation, and yet that didn't stop him. "You could forget an important detail if you wait too long to put it down."

If Holmes saw through the ploy for information, he didn't show it, though he didn't cooperate either. He made a feeble attempt to snort in contempt of the notion, but he appeared faintly ill afterwards. At length, he merely stared at the overlay of Watson's fingers and his own knuckles, and let out a distressed sigh. His voice was hardly fit for a great detective when he fairly begged, "Watson, please. I'd rather not talk about this right now ."

"Holmes – "

"I assure you, I will not forget."

Watson's mouth went dry and he found his hands fumbling with a flask of medicinal alcohol. "No," he breathed. "I don't suppose you will." Without much thought, Watson poured some of the antiseptic onto a cloth and took to cleaning the cuts and abrasions in front of him. He didn't so much refuse to contemplate their origins, as simply have no energy left for it. As he worked, he lowered his voice until it was barely audible, even to his own ears, and tried to explain himself in terms that Holmes would understand. "You must let me act, Holmes." He moved on to Holmes' wrists and took a moment to pick bits of woolen thread from the raw chafe marks there with a pair of tweezers. "If I have nothing to distract myself with at the moment, then I will soon be of little use to you."

"You were ever a man of action, my dear Watson."

Watson nodded, numb on every level. "Can you expect otherwise of me now?" His eyes flickered to Holmes's other hand, twisted up in the hem of his dressing gown, and then on to the pale skin of his abdomen, now marred by the angry prints of frightfully large and brutal hands. Watson picked the washing cloth out of the water bowl and tried to be gentle about scrubbing away the grime that stained his skin. "I am not capable of doing nothing about this, Holmes. You may consider it a weakness if you wish, but if that is so, then I embrace it."

Holmes didn't reply right away, and Watson was able to distract himself for the most part, his hands divorced from the rest of his body as he tended to a number of crescent-shaped gouge marks – fingernails that had broken the skin. Eventually, he heard Holmes whisper, "It is not a weakness."

Watson couldn't be sure that Holmes meant to be heard, so he kept quiet and coaxed Holmes to lean forward to allow Watson easier access to his back. Holmes squirmed some as Watson prodded to check for broken ribs, but it could have been any kind of discomfort that prompted it; aside from the bruised right kidney, there was a mottled purplish mark across Holmes' stomach that might have come from a knee to the gut, but it seemed that few other blows had been landed to Holmes' body. The most obvious evidence of struggling came from the finger marks imprinted on Holmes' arms and neck, and the fabric burns on his wrists. The two blows to his torso could just as easily have been obtained at the Punch Bowl, which led Watson to wonder if it only appeared that Holmes hadn't struggled much, or if he actually hadn't.

Dismissing that for contemplation later – or never – Watson angled Holmes upright again and moved the disinfectant cloth up to Holmes' face. The cuts at the corners of his mouth needed to be cleaned out, and one cheek carried an abrasion that looked to have come from being raked against the ground; there was dirt in it. Holmes leaned away from Watson's hand, so Watson raised his other to cup the back of Holmes' head, thinking only to hold him still for a moment. Holmes ducked to twist out of his grasp and scooted backwards, his eyes on the ground, and then on the wall over the bathtub.

Watson sighed in frustration. "Holmes, you must let me clean the wounds, or they'll become infected." When he got no reply, Watson pursed his lips and concentrated on refolding the cloth he held, mildly ashamed at having expressed frustration in the first place. Holmes was in shock, shivering still though he had ceased to quake as he had in the sitting room; he wasn't accountable for himself at the moment. "Shall we come back to that one, then?"

Holmes lowered his head until his eyes found Watson's, as if by accident. Watson could actually see the struggle that Holmes made to bring himself into the moment and catch up to what Watson was talking about. He didn't reply; in fact, he seemed to dim right in front of Watson, his gaze tracing a sagging line back to the floor.

Perhaps more sharply than he ought to, Watson snapped, "_Holmes_." He only meant to recapture Holmes' lagging attention, not startle him.

Holmes had never been particularly jumpy before, or flighty, though he occasionally let his eyes glaze or shut entirely to block out the shock and confusion of too much noise and chaos in a crowded place. Watson should have known better; Holmes was not himself right now. It wasn't even anything dramatic. Holmes merely stammered a faint breath devoid of actual syllables, then hastened to look at his hands as he twisted them up in his dressing gown.

Watson shut his eyes for a moment in self recrimination and then opened them to lay a hand on Holmes' shoulder. Holmes flinched, hard enough to shake Watson's hand off, and then he went right back to worrying the fabric between his fingers. "Holmes… God, I'm sorry. I just…I don't know how to deal with this. I'm…_trying_." He waited in vain for an acknowledgement, a reaction – anything – but when Holmes merely absorbed himself deeper in his distractions, Watson shook his head, his horror and grief overwhelming him. His friend had been raped. His friend – his very dearest, closest friend, had been dragged off of the street by four men, held down, bound, and sodomized. It wasn't as if he had just gotten into a brawl on the way home. They had stripped him bare to the soul and used him like a common whore. He had not been Sherlock Holmes at that moment. He had just been a man too small and weak, for all his cunning and skill, to overcome four others.

They had done something to Holmes that couldn't be fixed with salve and antiseptic, and Holmes…emotionally unable to deal with even simple things like common friendship and reciprocity, and determining that discussion of murder methods did not make appropriate topics for dinner conversation…Holmes the hopeless logician was stuck there, trying to make sense of it. Trying to apply his great mind to unraveling a feeling that had little to do with rationality. And Watson had yelled at him for it.

"Did I tell you about the buttons, Watson?"

Watson lifted his eyes but not his head, drawing a faint and off-kiltered breath through his open mouth. "Yes, Holmes." He spoke hoarsely, as if to a child; he couldn't not anymore. "Yes, you did. Forty two of them."

"Right," Holmes replied. He sounded normal, which was all wrong and hollow now, here with finger marks still bruised into his skin and the crescents of fingernails dug in red lines about his hip bones. "And the cuff links – Watson, I require a pencil. They displayed a most particular pattern of tarnish. I have memorized it." He almost – _almost – _managed to look smug over that accomplishment.

Watson nodded numbly, trying to find the shadow of Holmes' avid self anything other than heart-rending. "I will get you a pencil."

"Thank you, Watson." Holmes still wouldn't, or else couldn't, look directly at him, though he had at least ceased to twist at the folds of his dressing gown. "You have always been very kind to me."

Under his breath, Watson merely breathed, "God." Then he heard footsteps outside the door and rested a hand on Holmes' knee to forestall any possibility of upset. "We've woken Mrs Hudson. I'll see that she returns to bed."

"Is she not allowed to be about in her own house?" Holmes' brows furrowed as Watson struggled to gain his feet. "Wait – where are you going?"

"To the hall. I'll only be a moment."

Holmes plucked at Watson's pant leg with a startling ferocity. "Watson – "

"It's only a few feet, Holmes – I'll be right by the door."

"No! Wait – Watson, wait – "

"Alright! It's okay. Calm down." Watson crouched again, ignoring the scream of his strained leg, and tore Holmes' hands from his shoulders. With those long fingers clasped in his own, Watson promised, "I won't leave the room if you don't want me to – "

"I most certainly do not! You cannot go – Watson, you must – "

"I won't! But Holmes, you must calm yourself." Watson pressed Holmes' hands together and then let go of them so that he could pull Holmes' dressing back up to his shoulders. Without comment, he pulled it securely closed and then tied the sash before lightly cupping Holmes' cheek in the hopes that it would be reassuring. Holmes threw his head aside to avoid the gesture. "Alright. I'll be right here. You'll be able to see me the whole time."

Holmes nodded vigorously, his fingers all but tearing into the fabric of his dressing gown.

Watson straightened again with one hand braced on the door jamb, just as Mrs Hudson knocked and called out a somewhat irritated complaint about the god-awful hour. "A moment, Mrs Hudson." Watson smoothed his rumpled clothes down, including the creases from where Holmes had grabbed onto him in the sitting room, and then planted his left foot so the door could only open a few inches. Through the sliver, Watson said, "I know how late it is, Mrs Hudson, but I must beg your indulgence once more. We won't be long."

Mrs Hudson looked scandalized at finding her two male lodgers closeted in the washroom together in the middle of the night. "What on earth – my god, the smell! Don't tell me he's brought some filthy experiment into my washroom. Doctor Watson, really."

"It's a medical matter, I assure you. We are very sorry to have woken you."

Something in Watson's demeanor or poise must have given away something that he hadn't intended, because Mrs Hudson closed her mouth on her next retort. She eyed Watson and then stepped back, wary and angry still, but more discerning now. "You're paler than I've ever seen you. Was the boxing ring so cruel tonight?"

Watson pulled in a breath through his nose and glanced over to where Holmes sat, staring at an empty spot of air somewhere midway to Watson's feet. He tore his eyes away and fixed Mrs Hudson with what he hoped looked like his normal doctor's demeanor. "There was an incident. I assure you, everything is – "

"What's happened?" The last vestige of anger left her and she craned her neck in a vain bid to see past him. "Is Mister Holmes alright?"

God, Watson thought. How in Heaven's name was he supposed to answer that? "I haven't time to explain, Mrs Hudson. If you'll excuse me." He pulled back, intending to shut the door on that look on her face, the one that betrayed suspicions that probably hit close to the actual mark, at least on some points.

Mrs Hudson didn't try to stop him from closing her out of the room, and yet something on her face made him pause. When he steadily met her gaze, his own expression crafted to warn her off of saying anything at all, she merely stated, "I'll put a kettle on, Doctor. If you require assistance, I'll be in the kitchen."

Watson wasn't entirely sure what to make of her solicitousness. Mrs Hudson was often kind to him, but she never expressed anything other than irritation toward Holmes. Her reaction now, he was almost certain, had nothing to do with himself; the way her eyes trailed to the door, as if she could see Holmes through it, spoke to some brand of caring that Watson could not remember seeing her direct toward Holmes before. Then again, if she truly felt no sympathy or fondness at all toward her most difficult lodger, why had she consented to allow him to stay for so long?

Watson offered a guarded nod in response and then watched her retreat into the darkness of the ground floor hallway before he quietly closed the door. He pressed his forehead to the cool wood for a moment, waiting for the sound of her footsteps to fade away. He could feel Holmes' eyes on him, actually looking at him this time, and Watson swiveled his head to meet them. Holmes merely blinked at him, and Watson dropped his gaze; there was a lack of affect to Holmes' features that he could not bring himself to see. "Come on, Holmes." Watson reached down to grasp Holmes' shoulder. "Let's finish cleaning you up."

Watson knelt back down in front of Holmes, then hesitated indecisively. He wanted to offer some word of encouragement, but he wasn't sure what would work best for his purposes. After a few false starts, Watson settled on, "Halfway there, old boy." Though on the inside, Watson didn't think they had gotten that far at all yet.

Holmes nodded, but to Watson's shoulder, and then he inexplicably reached out to brush some speck of dust from Watson's shirt. Once he had done so, Holmes sat back on his heels and appeared self-satisfied for the barest moment.

"Thank you." Watson cocked his head to the side, but he wasn't really sure what to make of all that. "Shall we get the rest over with?" He was not looking forward to this part, but it had to be done. The risk of injury, of tearing…if Holmes wasn't even comfortable sitting, then there was some form of damage… Watson swallowed hard and looked away as the haze of anger washed over him again. What they had done to his friend… "Holmes…the sooner we begin, the sooner you can get some sleep. Come, now." He covered one of Holmes' hands where it lay twisted in the hem of the dressing gown – long, bony fingers with an abundance of knuckles – masculine hands, and yet the violinist could be seen in the graceful curves of the digits, and the hard calluses at the tips. Those fingers tightened when Watson sought to insinuate his own beneath them, and Watson sighed in what he hoped was sympathy, rather than pity. "It's alright, Holmes. You can let go."

Watson expected reluctance at this point in the proceedings, especially when he pried Holmes' fist open and dragged it from the belt of his dressing gown. What he did not expect was for Holmes to curl so violently away from him, and then suddenly lash out when Watson refused to back off.

Watson narrowly avoided a good bump on the nose, and then he held his hands out defensively when it appeared as if Holmes might try to strike him again. "Holmes. For god's sake. It's only me."

Holmes sucked in a sharp breath and held it as the wild panic flared and then bled from his countenance. He sagged back against the wall, panting lightly, his mouth moving soundlessly as he visibly struggled to calm himself, his eyes wide as a spooked horse and fixed on the innocuous tiles of the floor between them. The trembling returned with a vengeance and Watson held himself firmly in check, lest his instinct to wrap Holmes up and crush him only make things worse.

When it appeared that Holmes had calmed, or at least that he had divorced himself once again from the moment, Watson scooted across the floor toward him. He rested a hand on Holmes' knee only to have Holmes recoil with a purely animal sound, then held his hands out and away. "Alright," Watson murmured. "Alright." He backed away toward his medical bag, nearly beside himself to see Holmes cowering against the wall with his limbs drawn in close to his body, protecting himself even from Watson's well-meant ministrations. "Holmes? Look at me, please."

Holmes made a vaguely negative sound in the back of his throat and then shook his head.

"I would like to give you a sedative," Watson pressed. "Just enough to calm you. Is that alright?"

"No."

Watson felt himself waver for a moment in sympathy, and then swallowed it back down. "Holmes, I must treat you. It's for your benefit."

"No!"

"Okay," Watson breathed. He watched Holmes trying to make himself smaller and then blinked to clear his vision, his own emotions roiling with a bewildering blend of fury and protectiveness. His hands were already sifting through his bag, and Watson glanced over at Holmes for a brief second before he turned to finding something to knock him out with. Watson tried to justify it by telling himself that Holmes was hardly in a position to know what was best for him, and yet it still felt like betraying him. This would be easier for them both, however. Watson wished for that thought to alleviate his coming guilt, but he didn't think that it would.

There was morphine, but that would require getting a needle into the man, and Watson didn't think that Holmes would let him do that right now. Besides that, Holmes was already prone to agitated sleep; morphine would make his dreams worse. Watson had chloral, but that would require him convincing Holmes to drink something, and would take too long to work. The only thing left was chloroform.

"Watson?"

"Just a moment, Holmes." Watson used his body to shield his hands as he uncorked the small bottle and poured a measure onto a clean cloth. He tried not to anticipate what he intended to do because he was certain that he would not be able to go through with it if he did. If this were any other patient, he would have administered a sedative long before now, and he would not have questioned the need to do it by any means. If only this _were_ any other patient.

"What are you doing?"

Watson felt even more a cad when he heard the mistrustful edge to Holmes' voice. He couldn't answer without lying, so he said nothing at all until he had recorked the bottle and returned it to his bag. When he pivoted on his good knee, he encountered Holmes' wary scrutiny. "I…" He pressed his lips together and then simply said, "Forgive me."

It took but a moment for Holmes to realize what Watson intended – he was still the world's foremost logician. He managed a strangled _No!_ before Watson was on him, and then the cloth muffled any further exclamations. Watson held on as tightly as he dared while Holmes thrashed and tried to escape the drugged cloth. Holmes growled and held his breath at first, his fingers clawing at the arm that Watson had slung across his chest, and then he tried to twist free, but the wall got in his way. When he realized he was trapped there between Watson and the wall, a great sob escaped him, but he still refused to inhale.

Watson held him tighter, his lips next to Holmes' ear to deliver a litany of soothing reassurances. "Shh…Holmes, it's alright. I've got you, it's alright…" Holmes kept struggling, but he was exhausted and sore, and Watson held onto him easily, the back of Holmes' head pressed to his collarbone. "I'm not going to hurt you. No one's going to hurt you, Holmes, please…it's alright. I swear, just breathe."

Eventually, Holmes had to take a breath, and even as his eyes grew wide and fluttered at the wash of the drug, Holmes' struggling intensified. He kicked aimlessly and then scrabbled to pry Watson's hand off of his mouth. Watson had to hide his face against Holmes' neck to avoid being clawed at, and when Holmes' flailing hand found his hair and yanked, Watson teared up from something other than pain. He could hear Holmes whimpering behind the drugged cloth, desperate, broken sounds, pleading with him to stop. Holmes next inhalation sent his eyes rolling back, but he still squirmed, bare feet pushing against the bath rug until it bunched up in the corner, and then a horrible, muted wail drifted past Watson's fingers.

Watson ascribed the sheen to Holmes' eyes to the effects of the drug until it spilled down his cheeks, and then Watson's own tightly reigned composure crumbled. He folded himself around Holmes' slackening body and apologized over and over for any number of things – he didn't mark them at all. Fingers plucked at Watson's arms, at his shirtsleeves, the knees of his trousers, helpless against him, and Watson's stomach broiled as he discovered himself wondering if it had been like this with the others – if Holmes had struggled and cried like this, and begged and worked his fingers in vain at his attackers to get them off. Had their arms been around him like this? Had they held him as they violated him, shushed him and lied and told him it wouldn't hurt, like some sick parody of an embrace?

It took Watson an interminable handful of seconds to realize that Holmes was actually saying things from behind Watson's hand, and when Watson loosened his hold, he heard his own name repeated like a mantra, over and over again, and then Holmes started telling himself to go home, mark the book, sit in the chair and smoke a pipe – go home to Watson, just go home…

It was too much. Watson pressed the cloth back over Holmes' mouth to obscure the words again; he couldn't bear to hear them. The strength fled Holmes' body quite suddenly as he gave up the effort to hold his breath and panted in the noxious fumes instead. Watson kissed his temple because he couldn't stop himself, a wet affair what with the dampness on his own face, and Holmes mewled through one last bid for escape, weak as a kitten as he pawed at Watson's chest. The drug finally pulled him down, heavy lids fluttering shut as Holmes grunted and twisted against the floor. Watson dragged him closer as he sagged under the weight of unconsciousness and let the chloroformed cloth drop in favor of holding Holmes' limp body to his chest. Holmes twitched a few times, as if he were still fighting to stay awake, and then his head lolled into the crook of Watson's elbow. He went still, his breathing deep and even, save for an occasional hitch, as if he were lost even now, and fighting still.

Watson waited until he could be certain that Holmes would not wake up for a while and then carefully laid him out on the blanket he had brought down earlier. He arranged Holmes on his left side because he imagined it would cause him the least pain, his hand lingering on Holmes' face where it had made him flinch before. After bundling part of the blanket under Holmes' head as a pillow, Watson stumbled to his feet, weaved his way over to the basin, and threw up.

It was some minutes later that Watson's ears pricked to the sound of footsteps in the hall, and he hastened to spit the last of the foul taste from his mouth and wipe his lips with a handkerchief. His old wounds ached and he held his left arm stiffly to his ribs to reduce the strain on his shoulder as he stood and made his way to the door. He opened it to find Mrs Hudson seated on the stairs that led to his and Holmes' rooms, the sack of Holmes' ruined clothes open at her feet. "There is blood on these," she remarked with ghastly calm. She was holding Holmes' trousers; Watson hadn't even looked at them when Holmes had removed them.

Watson shuffled out into the hallway, pulling the door closed behind him, and then sank down the jamb until he hit the floor. "Pray leave them be," Watson rasped. "They're evidence."

"I've gathered that much," Mrs Hudson replied. She fingered the fabric for another moment before folding the garment back into the bag and tying it closed. "You can't live with Mister Holmes for any length of time without picking up at least some of his methods."

"That's very true." Watson lowered his head into his right had, his left arm cradled to his chest in the bend of his updrawn leg. "Mrs Hudson, have you a strong stomach?"

"Strong as needs be." She set the bundle aside with a delicate sniff and turned on the stair to regard Watson's defeated form. "I heard a struggle just now, I'm sure."

Watson nodded. "I've sedated him."

"Are you alright, Doctor?"

Watson scoffed and glanced up, a mirthless smile painted on his face; he could feel it stretch his skin thin.

"I've sent the servants out," Mrs Hudson volunteered. "It's a God-awful hour, but I thought it best."

Watson sucked on his bottom lip and ducked his head in gratitude for that much.

"What help do you need?"

"Brandy and oblivion," Watson replied sourly. "Neither of which I can afford to indulge in."

Mrs Hudson offered a sympathetic smile and tilted her head in mild reproach.

"Hot water," Watson said with a sigh. "And I'll need help…finishing…in there." He indicated the washroom with a curt gesture. "And a telegram will need to be sent to the Yard. Tell Lestrade to come as soon as he gets in." As an afterthought, he added, "Tell him to bring Clarkey. Holmes likes Clarkey."

"I'll send a boy with the message," Mrs Hudson told him, referring to the Irregulars who seemed always to haunt Holmes' vicinity. "And I already started the water heating."

Watson merely nodded again and squeezed his eyes shut, the heel of his hand digging into one socket. "God, what they've…I can't imagine… Four of them, Mrs Hudson. He hadn't a chance." He heard Mrs Hudson swallow and shift where she sat, and immediately apologized. "I shouldn't burden you with this. It's indecent – "

"Doctor Watson, if you imagine a woman can't understand such a thing, then you're a bigger fool than I ever could have thought. Damn indecency. I already know what's happened."

Watson started to hear her employ even moderate profanity, but she was right. "I apologize, then. Again."

The swish of fabric brought Watson's attention up again, to find Mrs Hudson pulling her nightclothes about her as she stood. He watched in a daze as she strode over to him, and then found himself at eye level as she crouched before him, eyes ablaze. "Stop pitying yourself; there's nothing you can do to take it back."

"I know that – "

"And don't go running off half-cocked," she interrupted. Not for the first time, Watson wondered how such a woman never came to rear children; she had the fortitude and the insight for it. "I know you, Doctor Watson. And you'll be of no help to him if you get yourself hauled in for murder."

Watson worked up enough saliva to swallow. It didn't surprise him that Holmes had deduced his likely urges, but Mrs Hudson? "Am I so transparent?"

Mrs Hudson offered a kind if sad smile. "No, Doctor. But if it were such a friend of mine, I would be sorely tempted too."

Watson pressed his lips together for a moment, sucking on his teeth to maintain a thin veil of composure. His vision blurred anyway.

Gently, Mrs Hudson said, "I'll go send the boy off now. Have a swallow of brandy yourself, Doctor, and take some heart. You won't lose him to this."

Watson nodded and breathed thickly through his nose when the queasy feeling invaded his stomach again. He barely managed to thank her, and then after she had gone, he swiped in anger at the moisture covering his own face. There was no excuse for it; he wasn't the one hurt. Feeling impotent about the whole thing didn't help. He should have been there; he was always there.

By the time Mrs Hudson returned, Watson was certain that she had lingered on purpose to give him extra time to collect himself. In addition to a ewer of steaming water, she brought ink and paper with her from his consulting room, and Watson took another few moments to jot down a doctor's report on what he had treated so far. Lestrade would need it for his case notes. Watson included what little Holmes had said so far about the attack, though it sickened him anew to write the bit about the money at the end. Then he handed the writing materials back to Mrs Hudson, nodded to her, and pushed the washroom door back open.

Holmes lay exactly as Watson had left him, curled on his side on the floor with his dressing gown covering him from neck to ankle, the blanket insulating him from the cold tile floor. Watson heard Mrs Hudson pause on the threshold and imagined her taking in both the lingering smell of the alley that clung to Holmes body, and the more nauseating scent of male issue that hung faintly but unmistakably in the air. That, and the few marks not covered by the gown – hands, wrists, neck and face… Watson stooped to tug the collar of the dressing gown back up over the bite mark at the base of Holmes' neck; he did not want to see it, though he would need to take an impression or tracing of it before this business concluded.

Mrs Hudson did herself credit, in Watson's eyes, by keeping whatever oaths or comments she had to herself. She knelt on the floor where Watson indicated and then accepted the bottle of chloroform that he held out to her, along with the used cloth. "If he stirs, sprinkle a few drops on it and cover his nose and mouth. Count four breaths and then remove it. Any more, and we risk sending him to sleep forever."

Mrs Hudson nodded and set the supplies aside. "Do you expect him to wake?"

"I don't know," Watson admitted. He eschewed looking at her in favor of laying out the instruments he thought he might need. "I haven't seen the damage yet."

A moment later, Mrs Hudson asked, "Do you think it was deliberate?"

Watson stopped cataloguing supplies, a suture needle loosely pinched between his fingers, and merely looked at her.

"I mean, was it random, or did they target him specifically? Could it have been about a case? A…warning?"

Watson blinked and then glanced down at Holmes' prostrate form. "He said they called him by name. But I hadn't thought…I hadn't even considered that it could be about a case. He seemed to think they had only followed him because they lost a bet against him in the ring." But if that were the case, Watson thought, how to explain the gentleman Fourth Man, or the fact that he had basically paid the other three to commit this crime? Those details didn't fit the idea of a spur-of-the-moment fit of drunken revenge.

"What is he working on?"

"I don't even know for sure," Watson replied. His own disbelief colored that statement; he couldn't imagine that Holmes would have taken a case, and not told him about it. "I hadn't thought he had anything in hand right now."

Mrs Hudson looked down and Watson watched from the corner of his eye as she smoothed a few matted curls back from Holmes' brow. "They must have had a reason."

Watson wondered that petty gratification didn't strike her as reason enough for this sort of crime, but she had a point even if she didn't know all that Watson did, which was still precious little so far. "Support him for me." Watson gestured at Holmes' upper body, and Mrs Hudson braced an arm beneath his shoulders as Watson rolled him mostly onto his back. He pulled Holmes' left knee toward himself without opening the dressing gown, positioning Holmes with his legs just slightly spread.

Mrs Hudson had shifted to cradle Holmes partly in her lap, and Watson observed her looking away to preserve his privacy as Watson finally reached for the flaps of the dressing gown. She had slipped a hand beneath the curve of Holmes' neck so that her fingers rested lightly over his pulse point, not as a doctor's might, but in that way that women have when they seek to assure themselves that the heart of a dear one continues to beat. She would feel it the moment Holmes stirred, _if _he stirred; any faint groan of waking would vibrate against her hand long before either of them heard it.

Watson dismissed the pang of jealously that Mrs Hudson's consideration engendered in him and turned back to his task. He should be grateful that the woman actually did more than just tolerate her most trying lodger, and yet he suddenly wanted nothing better than to drive her from the room and lock the door on her. He needed her assistance, and as she had said herself, she already knew what had happened. Watson would simply make it clear afterwards that she was not to let Holmes know that she had been in here throughout any part of this. Holmes was not normally prey to embarrassment, owing to his insurmountable ego, but in this case, Watson preferred not to risk it.

With almost angry gestures, Watson flipped the dressing gown from Holmes' legs and pulled it back, then stared for a moment. The blood… How could he have failed to notice the blood before? Watson must have made some small sound because Mrs Hudson turned her face even more resolutely away and found one of Holmes' limp hands to grasp in her own. Crusted brown streaks had dried in grotesquely patterned swirls all down Holmes' inner thighs, mixed with dirt and grit from being taken against the unforgiving ground, and dear god… Watson reached for a sponge and soaked it in the hot water, then ran it over Holmes' legs and up to dab his genitals. He would need the tweezers again. They must have pressed Holmes half naked into the filthy cobblestones of the alley… Watson felt the room spin for a moment and he closed his eyes to let the nausea pass.

"Doctor?"

Watson's eyes flew open and he growled, "I'll kill them." He abruptly set the sponge aside and set to work with the tweezers, a tenuous force of will the only thing keeping both his hands and his vision steady. "I will string them alive from a gibbet and let the carrion birds have at them." Fury and indignation served him so much better right now than shock or horror ever could, though he could feel the latter two hovering about the edges of his mind. There would be time for them later.

Mrs Hudson didn't reply and Watson wondered dimly if she had snuck a glance after all, but that would not have been like her. She was a proper if unconventionally assertive woman; she would never dare look unless she truly had to.

Watson worked in silence for some time, picking clean a number of abrasions on the most sensitive of regions and growing more wrathful as the minutes ticked by. He had to keep reminding himself that Holmes was safe now, and vowing that he would never, for a bare moment, allow the man out of his sight again, not even to visit the water closet. It was a ridiculous notion – he could hardly sew himself to Holmes' side for the rest of time – and yet it brought Watson a measure of comfort to think it.

At some point, Mrs Hudson enjoined him to wait a moment, and Watson had to hold Holmes' hands out of the way while she administered more chloroform. Holmes barely struggled, couldn't even manage to force his eyes open, but he voiced a slurred protest and made a number of distressing, grating sounds that left Watson certain he didn't realize where he was. And it hurt Watson to hear them, in ways he had not anticipated.

Once Holmes had quieted again, Watson finished the distasteful task he had been engaged in, and then cracked his back as he straightened from his awkward bend over Holmes' body. One last thing to tend to, he told himself. He spent a few moments delaying the next bitter leg of this journey by washing the last of the grime from Holmes' legs and tending a skinned knee, and then he set his mouth in a grim line and motioned for Mrs Hudson to shift to Holmes' other side. She did so, and Watson rolled Holmes back over, half into her lap, to expose his backside. Mrs Hudson slid a hand under Holmes' knee when Watson drew her attention with a word, and she held the limb in place where Watson indicated. Holmes required only two stitches, which was far better than Watson could have hoped after seeing the amount of dried blood that had stained his legs, but even so, Watson was glad that his stomach had already been emptied once, for it surely would have done so now when he took in the marks of hands and blunt fingernails across Holmes' hips and in the creases of his thighs that had been used to hold him steady earlier in the night.

Watson finished shortly and Mrs Hudson departed without a word to dispose of the bloodied water, and the soiled cloths and sponges. Watson ran a measure of cold water from the taps into the bathtub and then waited for Mrs Hudson to return with pails of boiled water to temper it. He spent the solitude taking deep breaths and repeating to himself that Holmes had asked him not to go after the men who had attacked him. He was loath to cede to those wishes, and yet he could not, in good conscience, refuse to even try to do as Holmes asked. All he could promise to himself, however, was to let Lestrade have his chance, but if the inspector failed to apprehend the blackguards, then Watson would do it himself no matter what Holmes wanted. He could not let this go unpunished. God help him, he could not. A traitorous part of him almost wished that he had simply allowed Holmes to go to bed when he had claimed to be tired. If he had, then he probably never would have known what deed had been done this night. Holmes would have sequestered himself until the wounds had healed, if poorly and slowly in the absence of proper treatment, and they could have both gone on in blissful denial and ignorance, respectively. Watson wondered if it would have been better that way, and then cursed himself for a coward for even thinking it.

The next time Holmes came around, Watson had a firm hold of him and Mrs Hudson had already come and gone with the hot water. There was no resistance this time; Holmes merely laid in Watson's grasp and stared into the empty air in front of him while Watson tried to coax him into speaking. It took a fair bit of cajoling, and strength that Watson didn't have in half his limbs, to get Holmes into the bath, but once in the water, Holmes hissed at the sting of the bath salts and Watson ended up soaked as he tried to both hold Holmes and hold him down. They eventually compromised without words and Holmes clung to Watson's shoulders while Watson scrubbed him down properly, dislodging the last of the filth from his pale, and now mottled, skin.

Watson could hear Holmes wheeze on every inhale, and ascribed it to the wild thump of his heart where it rested against Watson's chest. Holmes hadn't said a word since waking, and it concerned Watson, but he couldn't think of what to do about it except keep talking himself in the hopes that Holmes would respond to something he said. Watson commented on the day he had spent in the park, the transparent plot of the book he had been reading when Holmes came home, and made frankly ludicrous deductions about the postman's personal life based upon the manner in which he delivered the mail.

Holmes responded to none of it and Watson had given up the exercise by the time he strained to snag the drain plug with Holmes still plastered to him. "Okay, old boy. Up you get." Watson shoved himself to his feet and caught at Holmes' elbows when he lost his grip on Watson. "Come on. We're almost through."

Holmes all but crushed Watson's hands in his own, and he refused to relinquish them, which made it awkward getting a firm enough grip on him to haul him out of the tub. Somehow, Watson managed, just as he had all night. Holmes staggered a bit but kept his feet, and as long as Watson let him hang onto some part of him, Holmes didn't mind letting go of his hands. In this manner, with uncharacteristically trembling fingers pulling at his shirt, Watson was able to towel Holmes off and get him into clean night clothes. He wrapped gauze around the seeping sores on Holmes' wrists, which the hot water had aggravated, and then gently thumbed away the speckles of blood that had appeared in the cracked corners of Holmes' mouth. That was the only thing Holmes still flinched from, and though Watson had his suspicions as to why, he purposefully neglected to complete those thoughts.

Mrs Hudson hid behind her own sitting room door as Watson emerged, Holmes in tow, to make their agonizingly slow journey up the stairs. Watson didn't think that Holmes noticed her – he was too busy paying resolute attention to nothing – but Watson caught sight of her staring out, her features creased in worry, before she politely withdrew. Watson snaked an arm around Holmes' waist to steady him, because he could see the shivering weakness in his friend's overly cautious movements, and in the way he placed his feet on each step. By the time they reached the first floor landing, Holmes was listing alarmingly against Watson's not-so-sturdy frame, and Watson all but poured him into his bed, lifting and pushing at him until his consented to roll over to where he might be comfortable enough to sleep.

It was just passing six in the morning, and Watson estimated another three hours before Lestrade would arrive. He asked if Holmes needed anything for the pain, and to his everlasting relief, Holmes responded this time, if only to shake his head against the pillow. Watson hesitated at the side of the bed, trying to decide how best to act next, and then he grasped Holmes gently by the shoulder before simply asking, "Do you want me to stay?"

Holmes curled in on himself, but he glanced over his shoulder with huge, unguarded eyes. Watson took that as an affirmative and slid into bed behind him. He didn't intend to invade Holmes' space, but Holmes grabbed at his arm before he could withdraw it and dragged Watson flush against him. Several blankets separated them, and yet Watson could still feel every shudder that passed through Holmes' frame. Watson spooned up behind him, slowly enough that Holmes could pull away if he wished to, but he did no such thing. If anything, he pushed back to fit himself more securely into Watson's embrace, and at that, Watson pulled him in as firmly as he could, the fingers of his right hand interlaced with Holmes' and pressed to Holmes' chest. Watson tucked them together and shared Holmes' pillow, his breath falling against the back of Holmes' neck, watching the flicker of Holmes' eyelashes as he blinked now and then.

Eventually, Holmes drifted off as the a pale gray light began to seep into the sky outside the window they faced, but sleep refused to come for Watson. It didn't occur to him to change out of his damp shirt or find a blanket for himself to ward off the chill of early morning. The fire was lit at least, for which he imagined he should thank Mrs Hudson, and a fresh pot of tea sat atop Holmes' shaving table, growing cold. Watson ended up smoothing the sweat from Holmes' brow as he dreamed, and whispering over and over in his ear that he was home now, and safe. He held Holmes to him every time he jerked awake and started to panic, and then soothed him back into restless slumber with more vague reassurances. It was the most harrowing three hours of Watson's life, keeping vigil over Sherlock Holmes on that cold morning. He hoped never to have cause to repeat the experience, but by the time Lestrade and Clarkey arrived, Watson had garnered enough from Holmes' uncensored nocturnal mumblings to be truly incensed. And it was in that state that Watson stepped from the bedroom to greet them.


	3. Chapter 3

Lestrade looked up as Watson emerged, his brows drawing down as he realized that it was Holmes' bedroom Watson had been in, and that he appeared particularly rumpled, as if he had slept there. "Doctor. Is Mister Holmes in?" He flapped a telegram unnecessarily and declared with an air of irony, "We received the_ summons_."

"Holmes is indisposed," Watson replied as he pulled the door shut behind him, his voice terse and quite unfriendly, though he sincerely did not mean for it to be. Lestrade had done nothing wrong, though Watson imagined that he was speculating in a rather offensive direction at this very moment. Watson spied the morning tea tray sitting innocuously on the table inside the sitting room door and gestured to it in an effort to be at least a little hospitable. "It's frightfully early, gentlemen. Can I pour you a cup?"

Clarkey nodded, clearly confused by this twist of events, but Lestrade declined. "He's not in, then?" Lestrade asked. Once again, he glanced at the closed bedroom door, and Clarkey's eyes followed, widening as he realized what Lestrade had assumed.

Watson poured a cup of tea for Clarkey, hesitated, then made up a cup for himself as well. He had no stomach for drinking it at the moment, but he figured that having his hands occupied with Mrs Hudson's china would be wise. Without turning around, Watson said, "Inspector, I would thank you to stop drawing ridiculous conclusions about our sleeping habits. You already know that we're accustomed to sharing a bed." Watson pivoted on his good leg to fix Lestrade with the hardest stare he could muster, which he imagined to be rather flinty indeed. "For practical and purely _innocent_ reasons."

Lestrade pursed his lips and Clarkey cast his eyes downward in silent apology as he accepted the teacup that Watson held out to him. "Apologies, Doctor," Lestrade muttered. "It's simply a fair bit odd to me."

Watson nodded, but retorted, "You have clearly never been at war."

"No," Lestrade agreed. "But I do know what can happen in such shared accommodations."

Clarkey politely choked on his tea, but Watson paid him no heed. "I beg your pardon. I would _never_ – " Watson choked himself off and imagined he could taste the sudden fury and outright disgust like tin in the back of his throat. "And Holmes wouldn't even know how!"

Lestrade opened his mouth just to blink and close it again.

Watson shut his eyes and held out his teacup as if it could serve to end the subject. "Never mind," he muttered, breathing in an effort to gather his frazzled nerves back together. He should not have lost his temper, and he certainly should not have revealed such a personal detail about Holmes' carnal experiences, or lack thereof. Then again, Watson had called Lestrade here for just that purpose, and Holmes had recently acquired quite a bit of carnal knowledge thanks to those damn bloody –

Watson cut his thoughts off there, because if he didn't stop now, he would only lose his temper anew. At least the outburst served to humble Lestrade into dropping his minor inquisition. "Doctor, forgive me, but I admit I'm confused. I assumed that this missive came from Mister Holmes, and yet I find only you here."

Watson took his customary seat by the fire and waited for the Yard men to perch themselves wherever they saw fit before explaining himself. "I asked Mrs Hudson to call you here."

"Indeed?" Lestrade cast Watson a sidelong glance and then glared at Clarkey for making a racket with his cup and saucer. With his eyes back on Watson, Lestrade said, "I think you'd better get to the point, Doctor. We're busy men."

Watson threw a shuttered glance at the bedroom door behind him before picking up the folder that he had earlier placed on the table next to his chair. He had finished the medical case notes in the washroom before the chloroform wore off. Without a word, Watson passed the papers to Lestrade, and though he appeared irritated at the cryptic nature of his welcome, Lestrade merely opened the folder and began to read. He blanched a moment later and slapped it shut. "Good god. Doctor, what is this?"

"A patient of mine had rather a nasty run-in with some unsavory types last night." Watson sipped delicately at his tea and relished the burn of the steaming liquid because it distracted him from the worst of his thoughts. "That is my report of his injuries."

"What patient?" Lestrade peeked in at the notes again, and then said, "There's no name on this."

"He wishes to remain anonymous."

Lestrade set the folder on his knees, and though he appeared sympathetic, he nonetheless had to point out, "You know that without a complaining witness in these sorts of crimes, I can do nothing. I can keep his identity confidential during the course of the investigation, but I will require his name."

Watson's eyelids drooped in a lazy manner, though he felt nothing akin to languid. "I have already told you that he is indisposed."

It took a moment for the implication to sink in, and then Lestrade looked down at the folder in his lap as if it might come alive and bite him. "Dear god." He raised his eyes again and asked, "Is he alright?"

With no embellishment, Watson simply replied, "No."

Clarkey peered into his teacup as if he regretted drinking it, then set it aside. "Forgive me, Doctor Watson. But what's happened to Mister Holmes?"

Lestrade glanced to Watson for permission before passing the folder to Clarkey. A few seconds passed and then Clarkey paled considerably, but he made a point to read the entire thing through, as Lestrade had not, and continued to study it with the most determined, if queasy, intent as Lestrade asked Watson, "Were you in the vicinity when it occurred?"

"I was here," Watson replied. He could hear the self-recrimination in his own voice as he spoke, chunks of lead in his stomach. "I did not feel up to a night out; the weather's been poor lately." He didn't bother adding that the damp air aggravated his war injuries; Lestrade knew him well enough to infer that. Far more softly, Watson added, "He ran home. Seven miles. It is a small miracle that his heart did not explode at the strain of it."

Lestrade silently extracted a notebook and pencil from his jacket pocket and opened it to a fresh page before licking the end of the stylus. "Start from the beginning, if you please. Tell me everything that you know."

Watson swallowed hard and set his tea aside at that, not because he found the task daunting – which he did – but because his mind had automatically conjured up a vivid memory of Holmes criticizing his writing, remarking that Watson had the deplorable habit of relating events from the back end forwards. He mumbled an awkward apology for the delay but Lestrade waved it off and waited patiently until Watson could speak in a semi-level tone. Then he related all that he knew – when Holmes left their rooms the prior evening, his stated intentions to pass the night at the Punch Bowl… Watson left out mention of the boxing events because they were technically illegal and Holmes would no doubt be upset to learn that his own misfortune had rebounded on the comparatively innocent tavern keeper. About that, Watson said only that Holmes had engaged in some gambling, and that the losers had evidently not been pleased. He slipped up when he mentioned his own customary bet and Holmes' insistence that he had to pay Watson back because it was Watson's money he had lost, but Lestrade shook his head over it and Watson realized that the inspector already knew of the boxing ring. They did not mention it explicitly, because then it would have been part of the official record and Lestrade would have been bound by his office to pursue the matter, but Watson felt a small bit of relief at knowing that Lestrade's investigation would not be hampered by that small grain of untruth.

After explaining how he had come to understand what had happened on Holmes' way home, Watson paid special mind to repeating verbatim everything that Holmes had said about the actual attack, which was not much. Most of what Holmes had mumbled in his sleep had not been substantial observations or facts, but exhortations to himself and gasped pleas to his attackers. Of course, Watson left out any mention of the buttons because it simply wasn't relevant to anyone but Holmes, and he tried to censor parts of the previous evening to save Holmes' dignity, but he could only leave out so much. Still, Watson was left with little to tell the Inspector beyond the information detailed in his medical report. Holmes had said little about his attackers' appearances or distinguishing traits. Lestrade said nothing throughout this part; he merely jotted down copious notes and kept his eyes fixed on the scratch of his pencil. At some point, Clarkey finished his inspection of Watson's written report and set it aside with a faintly sick look.

The snick of the door behind him struck Watson silent in the middle of explaining that Holmes' pocket watch could probably be found by scouring pawn shops. He glanced over his shoulder to watch Holmes creep past him, so much like himself in the morning that Watson breathed a silent sigh of relief. Perhaps sleep had been all he needed. Or daylight. Holmes pawed through the mess on the mantle and came up with a cigarette, then froze with it between his lips when he finally noticed the other people in the room – the people not Watson, anyway. His head darted between them, quick and furtive like a bird, and then he faced the fireplace again, this time in search of a match, as if he could render himself invisible by ignoring them all.

Watson noticed Lestrade and Clarkey taking in Holmes' appearance while trying to appear to look elsewhere, then pushed himself to his feet. He fished his matchbox from his pocket and approached Holmes such that he wouldn't startle the man. "Here."

Holmes turned at Watson's voice and scuttled back a step, but when he noticed the matches, he seemed to recollect himself, drawing up to his full height as Watson cupped his hand around a lit match and held it out for him. Holmes leaned forward just far enough to puff his cigarette into a suitable state to smoke it, then stepped away just a bit too quickly. Lestrade and Clarkey probably did not notice anything hasty about the retreat, but Watson knew Holmes, possibly more than was healthy for either of them.

Before Watson could say anything in reproach about his being out of bed, Holmes turned to scrutinize their guests with faint interest. Watson waited for the inevitable deductions: that Clarkey had spent a hectic morning parading around his own house with his little son hanging off one arm, as evidenced by the tiny jam-print on the edge of his otherwise pristine collar, just below his ear where he would not have been able to see it in the glass; that Lestrade had spent the night somewhere other than his own home - likely his own office, actually, as his wrinkled sleeves spoke to having had a head pillowed on them, his rumpled trousers were twice-worn and he had shaved with a more blunt razor than his usual; that Watson was drinking his tea without sugar, which Holmes had probably smelt on his breath when he had leaned close for the match. Those, plus a half dozen additional statements too obscure for Watson himself to notice should have come streaming from Holmes' lips.

None of them did. Holmes finished his examination, blinked as if he had not noticed anything at all, and then turned to ask Watson, "Have we a case?" His voice rasped lightly on account of the abuse to his throat, but it could have just as easily passed for the gravel of early morning. "Splendid."

Watson stared. It wasn't like Holmes to pass up the opportunity to show off. That plus the vague smile twitching his mouth into an absent shape, mottled by the scabbed splits in his lips caused by the gag, left Watson speechless for a moment. Finally, he glanced at Lestrade – Clarkey had decided to find his boots fascinating for the moment – and then told Holmes, "You should be resting."

"Nonsense!" Holmes started to clap Watson's shoulder and then caught his hand abruptly in mid air. His fingers curled in as he dropped his arm, looking somewhat disconcerted at himself, and then he shook it off and grinned convincingly enough that Watson knew it was fake. "You know I cannot abide bed rest. Now." He put his back to Watson and regarded their guests with that same distant interest as before. The avid gleam to his eyes seemed even more surreal when taken in conjunction with the dark smudges that exhaustion had painted beneath them. And of course there were the finger marks on his jaw to contend with, their contrast to his otherwise pale skin heightened by the bright shock of sunlight that pierced the window facing Baker Street. "What have you brought me?"

"Um." Lestrade visibly wavered, and then cast Watson a silent plea for help.

Watson caught at Holmes' shoulder only long enough to regain his attention and then gently explained, "They're here about last night."

Holmes' expression went soft about the edges without fading altogether, and then he looked at his cigarette.

"Do you feel up to speaking to them?" Watson asked kindly.

Holmes' eyelids drooped a bit, and then he replied, "I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about." It was the same tone he had used the night before, while standing in almost that exact same spot – the frightfully soft one.

Watson flared his nostrils, but otherwise managed not to react. "Holmes – "

"No," Holmes interrupted, his voice disarmingly serene. It could have been a belated answer to Watson's question, or simply another denial of the whole situation; there was no telling which. "Watson, where is the breakfast tray? I find myself quite famished."

Watson's throat clicked as he failed to find a suitable reply to that, and he watched Holmes flounce past the two Yard men, his movements determined and yet stiffly executed on account of hidden injuries. Holmes yanked the sitting room door open and hollered for Mrs Hudson, only to wince as the air grated through his swollen windpipe.

"Holmes, for god's sake." Watson picked up a blanket as he strode across the room to where Holmes had braced himself in the doorway with one hand to his throat and his lit cigarette singing the moulding beside the fingers that pinched it.

"Watson, I do believe I'm coming down with something."

Watson's arms stuttered as he shook out the blanket, and then he draped it across Holmes' shoulders with his eyes scuttling elsewhere. A fine thread of worry crept about Watson's stomach, irritating the tea that already resided there. "Please tell me that this is an act."

Holmes straightened only to flinch at his own movements and grip the doorjamb harder as he hunched again. His hand went to his lower back, to the bruised right kidney, and then he peered up at Watson through slightly panicked eyes.

Watson stared back, grateful for the mustache that hid the set of his mouth. "They've already seen my report. If you prefer not to speak them now, there's no harm done; they can come back whenever you're ready." He jerked his head toward the sofa. "Now come lay down before you tear the stitches."

Holmes' composure wavered. "What stitches?"

Watson screwed his mouth up to one side and flicked a pointed if apologetic glance down. "I had to stitch you up, Holmes." As the realization passed over Holmes' pallid features, Watson took refuge in the medical aspect of it. "Because of the placement, there's a marked risk of infection. The site will have to be kept scrupulously clean, and I'll provide Mrs Hudson with a strict menu that you're to follow for the next week, high fiber content to soften…Holmes. _Holmes._" Watson gripped Holmes by the shoulders and shook him gently to bring his wandering attention back before it went somewhere better left unexplored.

"Stop – " Not really a word, more a hollow breath and a soft grunt of sound uttered as an afterthought that only carried to Watson's ears because he was so close. Even though Watson was already letting him go, Holmes flung his arm up to knock Watson's hand away from his right shoulder.

Right. The bite mark. Watson held his hands up and took a step back, to put a more gentlemanly distance between them instead of remaining within that sphere that marked them as close and intimate friends. Holmes remained tensed for a bare second too long, and Watson felt his heart skip at the momentary lack of recognition on Holmes' face, at the way he raised his arms in a defensive stance the way he might in the boxing ring, calculating his next volley. As evenly as he could, Watson said, "Holmes. Stand down, old fellow."

Holmes' cheek ticked, and then he gradually lowered his hands, his movements abbreviated and jerky. He still breathed too quickly, though, in shallow pants the way he had the night before, when Watson had first noticed him.

The room had fallen far too silent, and Watson felt his neck prickle with the awareness of movement when he heard Lestrade rise slowly to his feet. More sharply now, Watson admonished, "Holmes. You need to lie down."

Finally, Holmes' gaze dropped, and his arms with it, his lips parting as he recovered himself and then cleared his throat. "Right. Quite. My apologies." He shrugged the blanket more securely over his shoulders and then held it closed over his throat as he wandered out into the hallway, then back into his bedroom through the side door out there.

Watson poked his head out into the hall to watch the bedroom door swing closed, and then he pulled back and ignored Lestrade's unspoken question. "A moment, gentlemen." Watson returned to the bedroom via the sitting room door, which was still open, and gently shut it behind him. He leaned back against it once they were alone and regarded Holmes where he stood unmoving next to the disarrayed bed. "Holmes, you'll burn yourself."

Holmes raised his head but only partway, like an old confused nag in a strange barn. The cigarette had burned down halfway and Holmes watched the ash fall from it as he raised it to his lips, grey flutters caught in indirect sunlight before the shadows obscured them against the floor. He inhaled deeply and Watson waited, observing Holmes the way Holmes observed everything else. His shaky stance, the way he kept his weight on the balls of his feet to compensate for uncertain balance, the fine tremor in the hand that held cigarette that could have been a tell for mere exhaustion if Watson had not known him better, the way his other hand clenched repeatedly at the blanket he had collared himself with.

"You needn't speak to them today if you don't want to," Watson reminded him. "They have enough to start."

"Right, yes." Holmes swiveled a bit on his feet in search of an ashtray, then froze to find Watson holding a saucer out to him. It seemed like Holmes might refuse the gesture, ridiculous as it sounded, but after narrowing his eyes at Watson and sniffing for no good reason, he ground his cigarette into the well-worn china and backed out of Watson's reach. "Yes. Watson, where is my mail?"

Watson crossed the room to lay the saucer on the mantle, then purposefully made a show out of crouching to stoke the fire. If Holmes wanted to feign this abstracted normalcy, then for the time being, Watson would oblige him. "It's in the sitting room, same as always – skewered to the mantle. Will you speak to Lestrade, or should I send them away?"

"Watson, I have no desire ever to speak to them, or to anyone else for that matter, as I believe I explained to you last night. Now, as it was you who so inconsiderately invited them here in the first place, will you _kindly_ get them out of my home!"

Watson paused and then pulled the poker out of the fireplace. The sudden edge to Holmes' voice, that clipped and hurried manner he had of speaking when someone had tried his patience and actually angered him somehow, conspired to bring the thickness back to Watson's throat. Before last night, it had never failed to rile him up to equal levels. Watson kept his back to Holmes as he struggled to his feet with most of his weight on one leg, then hung the poker back in its place. He could feel the air flutter past his throat as he breathed, and then he rasped, "I apologize, then, for failing to respect your wishes. I will see them out."

Watson had nearly made it to the door before Holmes' grabbed his sleeve, and though he remained facing away, he did stop. Holmes released the already badly wrinkled fabric and smoothed it down Watson's arm as he withdrew his hand. Watson heard him take a few steps back, and then the mattress hissed as Holmes leaned against the bed. "I'm sorry. Watson, I don't…I should not have yelled at you. You've been…you don't deserve my anger; it was churlish of me." When Watson merely sighed and picked at his hands, Holmes' voice took on a more desperate, hopeless edge. "Watson, I don't know what to do. You must tell me what to do."

That brought Watson's head up, and he looked over his shoulder to find Holmes sucking his teeth behind closed lips and staring at him. Just…staring, and waiting for something, and silently begging him not to leave like this, hurt by Holmes' thoughtless if perhaps justified words. Watson wondered how long it would take for that look to go away, that frightfully open, slightly doe-eyed gaze that had been on his face since he had rescued Watson's book the night before, his lips pressed together as if he feared what might spill from them, were he to so much as open his mouth.

Watson swallowed and offered Holmes a tiny if easy sort of smile, just to convey that there were no hard feelings. It faded a moment later, and Holmes' eyelids drooped as it went, his gaze sliding down to Watson's braces as if he were disappointed to have managed only that reaction from Watson.

"Holmes…" Watson raised his hand and then let it flop back to his side, unable to come up with the right words for explaining that his own behavior was no fault of Holmes'. Eventually, he settled on, "I meant it. I'll see them out if you don't want them here."

Holmes sucked in a frustrated breath as he rolled his head to the side. _Watson, I don't know if I can tell them. I don't even know if I can tell you. I'm confused, I'm scared, I don't want to see them look at me now, I don't want to know what they'll think, they know, how could you tell them…_ Any one of those statements would have been appropriate; Watson could practically see them already, weaving obscure patterns through the empty space between them. What Holmes actually said was, "You're making a big deal out of nothing."

Watson stopped himself from retorting as he would have liked – _bollux, Holmes. I saw the marks – _but his mustache ruffled as he made an irritated face behind it. With a deep breath thrown in for good measure, Watson merely replied, "If a client came to you looking as you do right now, what would you say to them? Shake it off, there's a good chap?"

"I would ask – " Holmes broke off and fidgeted with the blanket.

"What would you ask, Holmes?"

Holmes' eyes sidled over to Watson, and then he straightened imperceptibly. "I would ask if he were an invert."

Watson cocked his head to the side and then sought out his pockets to hide his clenched fists. "I already know that you are not an invert."

"Lestrade thinks we both are." Holmes seemed to shrink a little bit where he stood. "I heard you. I was awake when you left me."

Watson narrowed his eyes, his stance shifting into a more confrontational pose. He only meant to put himself at odds with the notion of it, but Holmes eyed him as if awaiting some sort of attack. Watson forced his shoulders back and ducked his head in the hopes of appearing less aggressive. "Irrelevant, either way. Even if you were an invert, it would hardly matter. Would a woman be blamed for her misfortune if she were attacked by her natural mate?"

"I was not…it is not natural, and dammit Watson, I am not a woman!"

His vehemence startled Watson into quickly soothing, "I know."

"And to answer your question, yes, on occasion, she _would_ be blamed."

Watson's jaw dropped. "Holmes! I know that you incline toward misogyny, but really!"

Holmes fumed for a moment, then said, "Then you would _not_ blame the whore who claimed mistreatment at the hands of a paying – "

"You are not some rent boy looking for an easy shilling! What the devil has gotten into you?"

"They paid me – "

"With the money they had already stolen from you! Holmes, I insist you stop this immediately."

Holmes paced for perhaps three steps, then declared, "Fine. But your comparison is ridiculous."

"On the contrary, it is quite sound. Holmes, no matter your inclinations, you did not ask to be attacked."

Holmes' lips thinned into a tight line, and then he spit, "Didn't I?"

"What – " Watson choked himself off into silence, though his mind conjured up all manner of foul language that he hadn't heard since his days in the military. Since Holmes seemed bent on defying reason, Watson asked plainly, "Holmes, are you an invert?"

The denial never came, but neither did a confirmation. Holmes shrugged and started to sit on the edge of the bed, then abruptly thought better of it. The resulting footwork almost made it seem that he had tripped without taking a single step. "I must be."

Watson's lungs skipped a breath, and this time, he couldn't help the incredulous air of contempt that fought to saturate his voice. "That's your conclusion? Sherlock Holmes, the world's only consulting detective, thinks that because four men took him for a lark, it must be because he wanted it?"

"I didn't want it," Holmes bit back.

"Then what the deuce are you on about?" Watson demanded. "Is it them?" He flung an arm in the direction of the sitting room opposite the door behind him. "I don't bloody well care what they think, Holmes, first off. And second, that is _not_ what they think, I assure you."

"But they will. And then they will arrest me for it."

Watson scoffed. "What the devil makes you think that?"

Holmes picked at his lip for a moment, examined the water pitcher on the side table as if he were at a crime scene, and then said, "They arrested Mister Wilde for making accusations."

Watson blinked, then blew an incredulous sound past his slightly parted lips. "Wilde accused a noblewoman of libel even though he knew damn well that he was guilty of what she said. He was being a pompous idiot."

"Nevertheless," Holmes insisted, "it led to his arrest and incarceration. And since I am also guilty of having engaged in devious acts with fellow men – "

"You were raped!"

Holmes cringed and seemed to seriously consider never breathing again. Even saying the word was taboo in polite society, and though Holmes could rarely claim gentility, Watson was normally the perfect picture of decorum. "Watson – I – that is uncalled for."

"Yes," Watson replied, crossing his arms, his eyebrows twitching. "It is. Are you finished being ridiculous?"

"You don't understand."

Watson shrugged and stuffed his hands into his pockets. "In that case, I await a logical explanation for why you think that seeking legal redress will lead to your imprisonment."

When he got no answer, Watson advanced on him, stopping short of removing his hands from his pockets because he was pretty sure he might attempt to throttle the sense back into Holmes' rattling skull. "Answer me!"

Holmes shrank back and grabbed the bedpost for balance. "Watson – "

"Why do you think that?"

"It's a simple chain of – "

"_Why?_"

"Because I enjoyed it!"

Watson's anger ground to a halt somewhere in the vicinity of his sternum, and then he hissed, "_What?_"

Holmes' breathed nonspecific syllables for a moment, and then as if he found Watson's disbelief confounding, he said, "I mean, I must have."

"No," Watson replied, his tone a study a restraint. "You did not." He felt as if he were explaining the concept of a lie to a prevaricating child.

"But…Watson, I… There is no other explanation." Holmes' face took on a fervid countenance, something like what Watson often saw on the faces of soapbox preachers screaming that the end of the world was nigh. "I've examined the facts, you see. And I have studied the literature on human sexual practices. Copulation consists of – "

"Holmes, are you saying that you reached orgasm?" He asked it as if they were discussing one of Holmes' incomprehensible leaps of logic in a trying case, but really, just saying it left a sour taste in Watson's mouth.

Holmes reddened slightly as he nodded, then curled a bit as if expecting Watson to strike him. "So I am correct – I must have enjoyed it. And if I did, then I have no real grievance. Pursuing it would only lead to my own arrest for acting on deviant tendencies, however unwittingly. The theft of my personal belongings is perhaps suspect, but that is a simple matter of mugging, and hardly worth anyone's time. I am sure the items will appear in a pawn shop shortly, and I shall simply recover them when they do."

Watson let his eyes skew out of focus as his lids fell in a farcically languid droop. "Dear god. Holmes, I can't even begin to tell you how wrong that is."

Neither of them spoke for a moment, and then Holmes pushed himself away from the bedpost to skirt around Watson, making for the fireplace. "You're quite right; it is reprehensible. I'll find new lodgings immediately, and I thank you for not reacting violently. Your restraint is admirable, my good fellow – yet another testament to your charitable character. I am certain that you're quite unsettled to learn that you have been rooming with someone of such loose morals."

With a perfect lack of inflection, Watson said, "You are not an invert."

Holmes paused in the process of aimlessly rearranging the items strewn across his shaving table. "Watson, I have explained. You cannot fault my logic."

Watson refrained from answering and smeared his hand over his face instead. "In this arena, I fault your logic very much, Holmes. You are theorizing in advance of the facts."

"No, I have gathered – "

"You have no frame of reference for any of this, Holmes. You haven't the slightest idea _what_ you are talking about!"

Holmes sucked his lips between his teeth, his whole face pulled into a pensive frown.

Watson threw his hands up and then stalked over to where Holmes had propped himself facing the shaving table, his palms flattened amidst a scatter of toiletries and the contents of the makeup kit he used for donning disguises. "Holmes, look at me."

With obvious reluctance, Holmes pushed himself upright and turned to regard Watson, his stance akin to a cornered yet previously tame dog.

"Now think about this carefully. Did you, at any point, actually tell them that you wanted them to – god, to sodomize you?"

Holmes swayed his stance off to one side, wary. "No, not that. But…the other part."

Watson blinked. "What other part?"

"The…" Holmes' fingers played absently at the air, and then he pointed at Watson's face rather than his own. When he drew his hand back, though, his fingers touched briefly on his own lips before he dropped them as if they had been scalded.

Watson stood there for a moment, stunned, and watched Holmes shift his feet in a fit nerves that he had never had before. "Okay." Watson held his hands up, palms facing Holmes, and swallowed. "Did they have a revolver on you?"

"Knife," Holmes replied, his voice devoid of inflection. His hand trailed over the marks on his throat, a tell that Watson didn't think Holmes noticed. Holmes gathered up the gradually slipping ends of the blanket and once again pulled it tight about his neck.

Watson nodded once, spent a moment hating himself for making things even worse inside Holmes' muddled head, and then somehow compelled himself to say, "And they made you ask them for it?"

Holmes tucked his other arm up under the blanket and gave a despondent nod. "Watson, I am so sorry. I shouldn't have. I know I shouldn't have, but – "

"You wanted to survive."

The reasonable tone that Watson employed only seemed to make matters worse, and Holmes fell altogether silent where he stood, staring at the floor and blinking at intervals too long for actual sight.

Watson shuffled forward and gripped the jut of Holmes' elbow through the blanket. "There is nothing wrong with wanting to survive."

"You would not have done it," Holmes pointed out.

Watson made a noise that sounded something like _pha_, then said, "Holmes, you can hardly assert that."

"You have more pride than I do," Holmes insisted. "And you would not have sunk so low."

"Whu... Holmes, you cannot think like that. And furthermore - look at me. Furthermore, I know you; if there had been another way to come out of that alive, then you would have found it."

Holmes let Watson hold his gaze for a few bare seconds, and then he took to speaking in the direction of the bedstead. "No."

"What do you mean, 'no'?"

Holmes appeared sickened by whatever thoughts crossed his mind, and then he reluctantly replied, "I panicked."

"Oh." Watson heaved in a fortifying breath, then sighed, "Holmes, there is no shame in that."

"You would have had a body," Holmes mumbled. Then his voice fractured even though he appeared more numb than anything else. "They would have called you to identify it."

Watson's breathing turned shallow. He recalled snatches of the broken phrases that Holmes had babbled against him last night. "Holmes, I…" He had no idea what to say to the intimation that Holmes only did it so that Watson wouldn't have to bury him. Thank him? Even in his head, it sounded cheap. What he wanted to do was draw Holmes to himself to somehow crush the entire incident straight out of his memory, but Holmes had leaned away before going rigidly still in response to the hand that Watson had already put on him. Reluctantly, Watson let him go and returned to the fireplace, watching as Holmes seemed to come out of a daze and pull the already suffocating blanket tighter about his shoulders. The banked rage that had been simmering in Watson's gut all night flared and then died down again. "Holmes, if you can relate nothing else, then at least give us descriptions of the men. As your friend, I am begging you."

Holmes came back to himself with a shudder and looked up at Watson, his eyes hooded. He appeared to weigh the request heavily, but finally gave a defeated nod.

Watson replied in kind and motioned to the hall door. "I'm going to get my notebook."

"I do not want you there."

As if anything could have hit him harder, that blow did so. Watson hid it as best he could, thankful at least that Holmes had ceased looking at him again and so would not notice the gleam that momentarily distorted his vision.

"You would try to find them yourself."

Watson nodded again and swallowed, saliva catching in his throat. "Yes," he replied honestly. "I would."

Holmes tucked his chin into the blanket and then he actually smiled – a small and depressing thing, but a smile nonetheless. "Such a temper, Mother Hen."

"Yes," Watson breathed wetly. "I have to go. Holmes, I have to… I'm sorry, I cannot be here right now."

To Watson's further shame, Holmes didn't even bat an eyelash at that, as if it were nothing more than what he had expected. "That's alright, Watson. You haven't slept, after all. I am well aware of how trying I have been today."

A labored breath fluttered into Watson's lungs, preparatory to uttering some other banality, but once he had that breath, Watson could only shift his feet and then escape the room as quickly as possible. He found himself upstairs in his own seldom-used bedroom without any recollection of climbing the steps to get there, and with no thought for it, he slammed his fist into the wall with all of the force he could muster. By the time Mrs Hudson appeared in the doorway to demand to know what the racket had been about, Watson was sitting on the floor beside his bed and staring at the smear of blood he had left behind in the dented plaster, his knees drawn up to chest, his anger soothed by the throbbing ache of his broken knuckles.

* * *

Watson remained cloaked in silence on the floor while Mrs Hudson tended to his cracked and bloodied knuckles, breathing in much the same manner as Holmes breathed now, rapid and shallow through an outward, fragile mask of calm. He could hear his heartbeat thrum in his ears, and the sound of water dripping in a vacuum as Mrs Hudson wrung out her towel in the basin she had brought for him, but little else aside from his own breathing.

Mrs Hudson sighed and the moment broke. "You've done yourself a good one this time, Doctor. It may not be my profession, but I know the need for a splint when I see it."

Watson held his hand up and rotated it without really seeing the damage. He noticed how his hand shook, though, and thought of Holmes holding a cigarette. The hand slid out of his vision and Watson let Mrs Hudson catch it before it hit the floor. "They may as well have murdered him." It wasn't his own voice that said that; the words cracked and skipped like a pubescent boy's.

"You don't mean that." Mrs Hudson fussed over his hand some more and then wrapped it in a towel before placing it in Watson's lap. "I'll find something to bind that with."

"Yes, I do mean it," Watson countered. He sounded as if he had been screaming for hours, his voice a hoarse and pitchy scratch assaulting his already tenuous grasp on his nerves. His gaze wandered aimlessly over the wall as he rolled his head back against the edge of the mattress, and he wondered idly if Holmes had screamed much. "They held a knife to his throat and made him say he wanted it. He thinks that makes it his fault. He thinks there's no real crime because he consented."

"Rubbish." Mrs Hudson gathered her skirts and stood up, then bent to collect the water bowl and the formerly white towels she had cleaned him up with. "That's not consent; it's coercion."

"He thinks it's consent." Watson shut his eyes over the harsh glare of sunlight invading his room. "He thinks it makes him a molly boy, and that Lestrade will arrest him for it if he tells. Like Oscar Wilde."

Mrs Hudson paused at the door, glanced out onto the landing, and then came back to crouch in front of him. "Hush, now. He'll come around. And if he doesn't, you'll talk the sense back into him."

Watson passed his towel-wrapped hand over his eyes and gave a mirthless laugh. More in self-mockery than anything else, he replied, "His logic is sound."

A rustle of skirts betrayed movement, and then Mrs Hudson declared, "That is the most obscene thing I've heard yet."

"Then you explain it to him," Watson muttered. He looked off to one side and rested his hand back in his lap.

"Don't you think I won't." Mrs Hudson stood back up, but Watson only noticed because her shadow fell on him before she moved back to the door. "Stay put until I get back, or I'll have it out with you."

Watson chuckled, but it was a singularly depressing sound. "Yes, nanny."

Mrs Hudson drifted out of the room, but she called back, "Don't you start with me." Her house shoes cushioned her footfalls as she descended. "I get enough of that from Mister Holmes."

Into the stillness that she left in her wake, Watson replied, "Not anymore." His head thumped softly back against the mattress edge, and Watson catalogued the items in his own lonely room. He hated it up here, alone with the sterile, long-settled dust. There was nothing of Holmes in this room, and as loath as he was to admit it, Holmes was the only real, solid thing he had left to him. No family, a gravestone for a wife… He didn't know what he would do if he lost Holmes too, and even though he knew that his fears were premature, he thought of the one occasion on which Holmes had spoken of his own mother, the passing mention that she had died in an asylum of "the family illness." Fits of lost sanity ran in Holmes' blood; all it needed was a catalyst, and really, Holmes had been all but half mad to begin with. He couldn't imagine Holmes in Bedlam unless it was to share Watson's own cell, and that was not something he could allow to happen.

A fresh tread on the stairs roused Watson from his morose mental wanderings, too heavy a plod for Mrs Hudson. A few moments' wait produced Lestrade in his doorway, and he cocked his head at the look on the man's face. "Inspector."

"Doctor." Lestrade rubbed a hand past his temple as he took in the surroundings with no more than the polite degree of notice.

"I apologize for my absence," Watson offered.

Lestrade nodded and indicated Watson's wrapped hand. "Not necessary. I don't imagine you've had it easy these past few hours."

Watson ignored that comment, well-meant as it was, and gestured to a chair. "Has Holmes come out yet? I know you're dreadfully busy, but he said he would. I do appreciate your waiting."

"Not a problem, Doctor. And yes." Lestrade heaved a long breath as he sat, then leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. "He made me leave, though." With nothing else to occupy his hands, Lestrade clasped them and looked toward the window. "Thinks I'll arrest him for committing indecent acts."

Watson heard his own strangled breath before he realized he had made a sound at all.

"Clarkey's taking down their descriptions, though." Lestrade dropped his head to knock a few knuckles against his brow. "God in heaven."

Watson peeled his tongue from the roof of his mouth and took to an intensive study of the window sill.

"How are you holding up, Doctor?"

Watson raised his mangled hand in response.

"Right," Lestrade said, his voice gruff. "Well, save some of that for later. We'll find the blackguards if we have to dress up like dock slops and slog through the gutters all day."

Watson nodded, but with no real conviction. The odds of figuring out who had done this were actually quite low, and he knew it even if he could not quite give voice to it yet. "I saved his clothes for you. Probably not much use as evidence, but since I'd only have burned them anyway…" Watson flipped a hand in some random direction that vaguely denoted the bundle in the foyer two floors below.

"Yes, I saw it. Your good Mrs Hudson was kind enough to point it out to me." Lestrade sniffed as if just speaking of the business left the air polluted, and then said, "Eh, Mister Holmes' pocket watch… It'll be the one with the half-sovereign on the chain?"

"His initials are engraved on the inside cover."

"Well, that helps. What about the cigarette case? Any specific markings on that?"

"'To Sherlock Holmes, your dearest friend, John Watson.' It's on the inside, inscribed beneath the felt lining. Which is red, if it matters."

Lestrade grunted and pulled out a notebook to write that down. "Why beneath it? No one would ever see it there."

Watson's face pinched for a moment, and then he drolly replied, "Because we are two unmarried, middle-aged men sharing accommodations, and people already tend to get the wrong idea about it."

"Oh." Lestrade's pen ceased scratching, and then he acknowledged, "A wise precaution, then."

Watson snorted.

"And I hope you realize…about what I said earlier…" Lestrade paused to finish writing, then tucked the notebook away. "It was rude of me. Even so, I only meant it as a joke."

"Phht. No, you didn't." Watson glanced up, though, and tried to smile. "Still, the effort is appreciated."

Lestrade shrugged and wrung his hands. "Well, there are certainly worse things to be, is all. It's none of my business if you sleep together, no matter what you do in the process." When Watson bristled, Lestrade added a hasty, "I mean nothing by it, Doctor. It's just a comment."

Watson subsided, but darkly. He could only hold his peace for a minute, however, and finally had to say, "It's nothing like that."

A few more moments passed, and then Lestrade shifted to the edge of his chair, wrenching Watson back from a grim yet determined mapping of the streaks on the neglected window pane. "Is it too forward of me to ask what it _is_ like?"

Watson scrutinized him for ulterior motives, not that he really thought Lestrade had any, and then looked down at his poor abused hand, his mind filled with the violent roar of water, so like a rush of silence. "He came back. Out of everyone who has left me, he's the only one who came back."

Lestrade said nothing to that, which was only fitting.

* * *

Holmes stared at the cold fireplace grate and decided that he had finally experienced the definition of 'oppressive silence.'

"Um." In the armchair opposite, Clarkey cleared his throat and licked his pencil. From the way his jaw twitched, Holmes deduced that the constable would much rather be chewing on it than using it to write. Some child in his household possessed similar inclinations, as Clarkey's right cuff link appeared to have been gnawed upon recently. "Mister Holmes, sir? Whenever you're ready."

Clarkey had been repeating himself like a drunken parrot for nearly ten minutes now, and yet Holmes could not seem to force himself into responding. He scratched absently at the scab in one corner of his mouth and then convulsively shifted position in the chair, his movements abbreviated and angry, and more than a little uncomfortable. Watson would probably tell him that his outward unease reflected his inward feelings as well, and he would be correct, but it didn't matter because sitting there in that chair caused him a very real degree of discomfort. Stitches, he reminded himself, and then found, regrettably, that his mind dawdled over the knowledge that he had been injured severely enough to require suturing. He could not recall feeling the skin tear, but so many myriad pains had been inflicted upon him last night that it did not surprise him to know that he had overlooked it.

"All I need are their physical characteristics," Clarkey prompted. His fingers crabbed about to itch his knee while his eyes raked over the sitting room walls. He looked even more embarrassed for Holmes' sake, which was just irritating; his cheeks had taken on a splotchy reddish hue that did not compliment an officer of the law. "You needn't tell me anything else, sir."

Holmes started to snap that he was well aware of that, but the exasperated intent left him in a quite inexplicably silent rush of air. A clock ticked somewhere in the room, and Holmes frowned as he realized that he had groped for his pocket watch. He relocated his traitorous hand to the arm of the chair, and then looked up at Clarkey. He could well imagine what he looked like: unkempt, bruised, dark…wary like a cornered animal that had recently been mauled. Guarded did not even begin to describe the wash of unaccustomed feeling that swirled about in the recesses of Holmes' mind. This was ridiculous. He was being ridiculous. And yet telling himself that did not help to snap him into some semblance of his usual self.

"Sir?" Just a breath of air, that. "Are you alright? Can I get you something? Tea?"

"A cigarette." A twitchy grimace ghosted over Holmes' face as he heard his own voice grating in the quiet room like that. Speaking hurt, and he rubbed absently at the dark ring that he knew mottled the skin across his throat. The flesh was tender and warm to the touch. Swollen. He attempted to hide it beneath the collar of his dressing gown, an act of concealment that made no logical sense under these circumstances.

"Of course!" Clarkey leapt to his feet and luckily failed to notice how the sudden movement made Holmes flinch. He found another stray cigarette on the mantle and extracted a box of matches from his own pocket to offer him.

Holmes leaned away, pressing himself back into the chair even as his hand extended to snatch the items from Clarkey's hand. He straightened and then winced at the pain engendered by the movement, sinking back into his original slouch. _Stop shaking. You're pathetic. How many times have you been attacked? For god's sake, quit acting like such a...a woman about it. Quiver and tremble and blush and carry on like a damned simpering little soft – _

"Sir?"

The hesitant, anxious tone cut through Holmes' inner diatribe and he looked up, startled. Clarkey had resumed his seat, but he sat perched on the edge of the cushion, his head tipped to one side like a worried bird. Holmes blinked, grunted, and struck a match without focusing his eyes on anything. The flame flickered in his cupped hand and he held it to the end of the cigarette, which seemed to dance away from the match. It burned down toward his fingertips and he shook it out with a muffled curse, all but hurling the diminutive thing from himself to reside amongst old newspapers, dust and perpetual clutter. He would come across it again months from now and probably still be able to recall the circumstances that had led to its being there. The matchbox rattled as Holmes struck another, and then Clarkey's shadow fell over him.

"Let me help you, sir."

Holmes went stiff as a board when Clarkey grasped his wrist, gently to spare the bandages there, but not before jerking in his chair as if attempting to throw himself out of arm's reach. His throat locked for a moment, which at least spared him the shame of whimpering. Clarkey stilled and Holmes panted gently into the wingback next to his face, eyes wide, trying to get a grip, just get a grip. It's _Clarke_ for pity's sake, he's harmless.

Clarkey slipped the lit match from Holmes' tense fingers, and when Holmes plucked the unlit cigarette from between his lax lips, Clarkey took that too. Another match crackled, followed by a hint of sulfur on the air, and then Clarkey touched a finger to Holmes' shoulder. "Here." He held out the lit cigarette, his face as close to blank as he was probably capable of making it. Which was to say, not blank at all.

Holmes' eyelids fluttered as he reached up for the cigarette, and Clarkie turned away to resume his seat. It took several seconds for Holmes to convince himself to uncoil, and then he puffed intently on the cigarette and tried to act as if he had not just embarrassed Clarkie with that cowardly display. This would have to stop – he was home now, and it was over, and there was no rational reason for him to continue reacting this way with all of his nerves in a bunch.

"So, um. Shall we start with the one who is in possession of your watch?" Clarkie moistened his tongue without opening his mouth, creased his brow as he looked at the notebook where he had already taken some of Watson's information down, and then said, "I believe that you called him Top Man?"

Holmes wrapped his dressing gown more tightly about his throat and nodded.

"Was that his nickname, sir?"

"No." Holmes twisted sideways and drew one leg up to rest his heel on the chair cushion. It relieved some of the pressure on the sutured injury, so Holmes pulled his other leg up as well and balanced his weight partially on his feet. He could almost call his position comfortable now. "They did not address each other by any monikers at all."

Clarkey scribbled something with a pensive frown etched into every part of his face save his mouth, and then asked, "Why do you call him that, then?"

Holmes made a face at the wing of the chair. "Because he was on top of me."

Dead silence, and then a furtive scratch of pencil to paper. "And the others? Doctor Watson said that there were…four…sir."

Holmes nodded, sucked as hard as he could on the cigarette, cheeks hollowing...like last night, actually. He had done that last night, but not to a cigarette. His thoughts scattered and came back together rapidly enough to leave his stomach lurching in a singularly disconcerting manner, as if he had fallen from the roof of the parliament building. The sitting room dimmed and he lost focus of everything save his own hand. Holmes watched the lit end of the cigarette crackle and glow as the rolling paper flared and burned back. It tasted foul – Arcadia tobacco, Watson's brand – but it obliterated the imagined taste of something much worse that this conversation had conjured up for him. Trailing smoke as he spoke, Holmes named them, "Left Arm Man, Right Arm Man, and Fourth Man."

"Um…very good, then." Clarkey wrote that down, one foot tapping out a staccato betrayal of his discomfort. "Um. If you could, sir, can you describe Top Man for me?"

And so the interview went on in that manner – Clarkie coaxing and pressing, Holmes chain smoking and mumbling sullen, reluctant answers to perhaps half of the questions. It took Holmes a while to realize that not all of Clarkie's inquiries stuck to questions of the men's appearances, and he froze with his sixth cigarette – lit on his own, this time – a few inches from his mouth. He squinted at the unlit end and then slanted his eyes to Clarkie, who looked ridiculously innocent and beguiling where he sat.

"The fourth man?" Clarkie prompted to set the conversation back where Holmes had left it. "He remained behind after the others left. Why?"

Fourth Man. He had already rendered a description of Fourth Man; why was Clarkie still on about him? Holmes snuffed a contemptuous grunt at him and pushed himself to his feet.

Clarkie stood as well and swiveled as Holmes strode past him. "Sir?"

"Go to hell!" Holmes hurled himself into his bedroom and slammed the door on Clarkie, who actually had the audacity to try and follow him.

"Mister Holmes." Clarkie's voice filtered through the door, hollow and solicitous and _kind_.

Damn him, he didn't need _kindness_. Who did they think he was? He answered himself in the same heartbeat: a victim. They thought that he was a pathetic victim. Being labeled an invert would have been preferable - emasculating, yes, but at least they would not have thought him pathetic enough to warrant _kindness_ of that caliber. Just like Fourth Man, waiting behind and being _gentle_ and blasted bloody _nice _and complimenting him and touching him as if the last thing he wanted was to cause more pain -

"Have I said something wrong?" Clarkie rapped gently on the door and Holmes only realized that he was leaning back against it when the vibration trembled through his back. "Should I get Doctor Watson?"

Holmes pressed his palms flat against the door behind him, cool wood contrasting the rush of warm panic that he seemed unable to quell. Everything was fine. He was fine. He was home, Watson was upstairs, and Holmes was _fine_. Holmes pushed with his hands and then let himself thump back against the door. Breathe. Don't bloody panic. There was no reason for panic. Something bubbled up in Holmes' chest and he clenched his eyes shut as if that could stave it off. Just don't think about Fourth Man. Get a grip, get a grip… He drew his hands into fists and let his fingernails indent his palms, eight points of discomfort to focus on, but not pain, not oblivion, nothing drowned out –

_Ah, Mister Holmes. How the mighty have fallen._

"Mister Holmes!"

A thin, muted warble escaped his throat and Holmes catapulted off the door. He shot across the room to his shaving table, hands clawing open drawers, scattering makeup and disguise paraphernalia, his straight razor, Watson's starched collars… Objects clattered to the floor outside of his notice and he scrambled across the room with no recollection of having fallen to his knees, hands sifting through the chaos of his bedroom floor – _where is it?_

Footsteps clattered through other parts of the house as Holmes' questing fingers finally alit on the soft green velvet of his Morocco case. He fumbled it open and calm descended as he beheld the glint of steel and the wink of glass. He could breathe again as he stared at it, rapt, his entire being expanding with each inhalation. He didn't even notice Watson until the man was kneeling in front of him.

"What have you got there, old boy?"

Holmes blinked at him, non comprehending at first. Then he narrowed his eyes at the speckles of blood littering the front of his shirt, and finally registered the towel wrapped around Watson's hand. "What happened to you?"

Watson glanced at his hand and then offered Holmes a quirky, self deprecating smile. "Lost my temper."

Ah. Yes, Watson was prone to doing that. The Doctor may have actually owned a bull pup when they had met, but that had not been his meaning when he had warned Holmes that he kept one.

Watson held out his open left hand, palm up. "Come now, old chap. You don't need that."

Holmes regarded Watson's palm critically, mapping the whorls on the pads of his fingers. Then he placed the needle in it with an overabundance of care, as if it were a fragile, living thing.

A nearly inaudible sigh worked its way from Watson's mouth as he closed his fingers around the needle and removed it from Holmes' sight. He may have whispered his gratitude, but Holmes could not be certain that he actually heard it. He felt drugged, though he had not had a chance to indulge in his seven percent solution before Watson's arrival. He heard Watson telling Lestrade and Clarkie that perhaps they should come back the next day, and Lestrade remarked that they had enough to start with in any case.

The voices reached Holmes as if he were underwater, listening to a conversation taking place through the hull of a rowboat bobbing on the surface. The sound of air cooling his lungs took up the majority of his auditory input, and he felt…unwell. Not sick per se, but as if his body were anticipating an illness of some sort. It left him rather drained of energy, almost the way he felt just before the onset of his black moods.

Watson's hand alit on his shoulder at some point and Holmes looked up from his haphazard position on the floor. "They're gone." Watson's face crinkled inward just the slightest bit – a subtle expression. He had attempted to hide it and failed. "I'm sorry. I should not have insisted that you speak to them, not yet. You were right to yell at me earlier."

Holmes blinked as the words washed over him and seeped in somewhere around his heart. "I don't mean to worry you so much, Watson. To be so difficult – "

"This is not a result of your contrary nature, Holmes. You have nothing to apologize for."

"But I have put that look on your face yet again." Holmes lifted a fatigued arm and traced his finger down Watson's nose. He wasn't sure why he did it; normally, he kept his affections in reserve.

Watson's features fell even farther as he sank down on his good knee, awkward to spare his old wound. "It was not you who put it there this time. I promise you."

Holmes frowned as he searched Watson's features for one of his many tells, but the face before him, though troubled, bespoke only honesty. Rather than continue in this vein of conversation – there was no need since he had seen all he needed to and deduced from it – Holmes said, "Nanny will be annoyed at the damage to her wall."

An unlikely smile creased Watson's face as he dropped his eyes, a tiny chuckle tangled in the upturned edges of his ruffled mustache. "I will not bother asking how you knew."

"It was obvious," Holmes returned, pleased. A tiny bloom of pressure invaded his chest at still being able, after all of these years, to surprise Watson with his deductions. He often felt it, though he was not sure what it meant; he never had been. "Watson?"

Watson raised his eyes but not his head, still smiling lightly where he probably thought Holmes could not see it for the way the shadows fell. "Yes, dear fellow?"

Holmes blinked while his thoughts fractured a little bit, beyond his control. He did not like feeling so disjointed, and he liked even less that Watson's expression would soon fade again. "I believe that Fourth Man may have carried the French disease."

Watson's expression did not fade so much as collapse entirely. He mouthed, "What?" but apparently could not lend the word any air.

To be helpful, since Watson seemed unable to comprehend him, Holmes clarified, "Syphilis."

"I know what the French disease is, Holmes!" Watson shifted his foot and fell heavily down to sit on the floor. One hand moved to cover his mouth. Through his fingers, Watson moaned, "I didn't even think to ask..." His eyes tracked sightlessly back and forth and then fixed on Holmes as he stammered, "Explain, please."

Holmes moved his shoulders to one side though he turned his head in the opposite direction. "There was blood in his issue."

Watson appeared stricken, and his breath quickened. "Did he…put…Holmes, did…oh god. Are you sure? You were bleeding yourself. It could have been your blood mixed with the…with his issue."

Holmes shook his head. "He was apparently not a sodomite, though his inversion is without question."

A tiny flicker of hope flared in Watson's eyes as he met Holmes' gaze again. "Forgive me, but I must ask. He did not penetrate you?"

"No," Holmes replied, the merest hint of a short syllable. Matter of factly, he elaborated, "He used his hand."

Watson dropped his fingers from his mouth and then laid them, trembling, over the back of one of Holmes' hands. "This is important. Did his issue come into contact with any open wounds?"

Holmes' vision darkened as his lids drooped heavily down to shutter his eyes. "I am not certain. I was not facing him."

"Alright." Watson sounded winded, his voice faint and yet suffused with an odd echo. "Where did it touch you?"

Holmes twisted an arm behind himself to indicate the place on his back where he could clearly remember feeling the hot, sticky substance spatter and sear into his skin.

Watson drew in a deep breath, but from the way his abdomen expanded with it, Holmes doubted that the air actually reached his lungs, if he had managed to inhale any air at all by that movement. "Then I would wager that the odds are in your favor. You have no cuts in that region."

Such genuine relief suffused Watson's features that Holmes could not bring himself to tell him about the other part – the handkerchief that Holmes had glimpsed and what Fourth Man had used it for afterward.

"We'll be alert for symptoms of it," Watson was saying as Holmes' thoughts and sight both wandered. "But it does not seem that you could have contracted it that way. Just leave it to me, alright old chap? I'll keep you…" Watson hesitated over how to finish that sentence, and then merely repeated with a sense of finality, "I'll keep you."

Holmes wrested his gaze from the floorboards long enough to nod, and then slumped back. By the movement, Watson's hand slipped away from his own, and his skin felt colder for the loss of it.


	4. Chapter 4

The rest of the day passed in a fog for Watson, and with a surprising lack of note. Watson banished the syringe and the Morocco case both to the bottom of his gladstone bag, and Holmes spent his time either lying in bed or on the settee. Watson would not allow him to lay on the floor for purely inexplicable reasons, though Holmes often eyed the tiger skin rug with a hint of longing. The only noteworthy aspect of the time was that after they emerged from the bedroom in the wake of Lestrade's and Clarkey's visit, Holmes did not speak. In fact, it was uncanny how undisturbed he seemed, aside from the utter silence. Watson broke it often, but Holmes never returned the favor. It actually took Watson until suppertime to realize just how quiet their rooms had become, but despite his proudest efforts, he could not coax anything more than a weary, baleful look from Holmes. By the time they retired to bed, Watson had already given up.

The morning brought the unwelcome revelation that Holmes' right kidney had been bruised far worse than Watson had initially thought. Watson woke before dawn to find Holmes only half conscious, febrile and breathing laboriously, the sheets around him soaked in sticky perspiration, his pulse a wildly fluttering thread in his neck much like the abused string of a violin. He began vomiting shortly thereafter, and every convulsion of his abdomen caused him pain enough to emit hoarse, shivering cries that bounced and echoed about the rim of the bowl that Watson held steady for him.

Watson found himself in the unenviable position of trying to treat two opposing conditions. The fever and vomiting necessitated a replenishment of fluids, and yet kidney problems suggested a removal of fluids from the diet. The dietary restrictions of dealing with a damaged kidney also conflicted somewhat with those of a patient who needed to maintain the softest possible stools. He called it miraculous that the stitched wound seemed to be healing without incident, and yet the bite mark on Holmes' shoulder became enflamed within another day, much like the bite of a feral dog whose mouth teemed with disease; Watson found that an apt comparison, actually. He had to lance the wound before it worsened, a task made difficult by the way Holmes seemed unable to cease shivering with a disconcerting degree of violence. It failed to stave off the imminent infection, however, and by nightfall, Holmes had slipped into delirium, his temperature soaring to over one hundred and four degrees from a combination of that and the kidney damage. Cool compresses did nothing to lessen the fever.

The time between bouts of nausea were marked by a frightening, bright-eyed lassitude that set Watson on edge for being so unlike Holmes' usual demeanor. Watson prescribed small doses of morphine for the pain, reluctant to inject too much for fear of rekindling the oldest of Holmes' drug addictions. Watson had only become aware years later, when the cocaine began to appear in Holmes' desk drawer, that at the time Watson had met him, Holmes had regularly self medicated himself with various opiates in an attempt to escape the black fits that often overtook him. Watson had suspected such at the time, even if he had not understood the reason, but Holmes had hid it admirably well. By his own admission, Holmes had only switched to the cocaine because the withdrawal from the morphine had left him prostrate and useless for days on end. Watson was well aware of that demon, having been a slave to it himself for a long while in hospital after receiving his war wounds. He would not willingly inflict it on another if he could help it, especially not on Holmes, who trod a fine line of chemical dependencies as it was.

Contrary to Watson's experience with patients reaching this stage of fever, Holmes did not rave or carry on or babble in tongues known only to his delusional mind. He slipped into such a state of lethargy that Watson feared more for his sanity than if he had been screaming and pointing at invisible horrors, or insisting that his skin teemed with insects. In fact, he wished for flashbacks the likes of which he himself had suffered after the war, because at least that implied an effort to process events. This silence, however… Watson dreaded the possibility that it would not break. Holmes was simply so still as his pores leaked what little moisture Watson could coax him to swallow, and Holmes was _never_ still. Even in sleep, he normally tossed and rolled about and rendered the bedding a disaster area by morning, including the pieces that belonged to Watson. Only Holmes' needle had the power to render him limp and languid, and even then, it provided a respite of perhaps fifteen minutes before the twitching and the nervous pacing and the manic initiative set in. Watson could only equate this extreme exhaustion to a sick form of catatonia, and the thought of Holmes falling prey to the sort of nervous disorder that must run in his family terrified Watson.

Even during the night, Holmes said nothing; he slept more soundly than Watson had ever known him to do throughout their long acquaintance. Then again, in their long association, Watson had also never seen Holmes burn with such a dangerously high fever. It was difficult waking him in the morning, so much so that Watson reexamined him for evidence of a head injury, and then poked at the ugly mottled bruise over his kidney when that yielded only a small cut on the crown of his head. Then he drained the infected bite mark yet again, and seriously considered flaying that whole section of skin and muscle off. It would scar worse than any of the other marks littering Holmes' body on account of his risky lifestyle, but with luck and the proper attention, the infection would go with it. On the third day of the fever, disconcerted by the eerie silence that had fallen over their rooms, Watson did just that. The infection cleared, but the fever did not abate; the bruising to Holmes' kidney was indeed severe, then, and there was nothing that Watson could do about it save wait and hope that Holmes' body could mend itself.

To make things worse, Holmes' body did not cease its natural functions, which was to say that keeping the stitched wound clean became difficult in light of the perfectly normal need to make toilet. That was the only time that Holmes broke his eerie silence, for tending to that certain function with an open sore in that particular area was sheer agony. Watson had to kneel in front of him and hold him upright in the water closet, and Holmes gouged his fingernails into Watson's arms, face buried in Watson's shoulder to the point of suffocation just to muffle the breathless sobs that threatened to bubble and spill from his throat. In those moments, it was Watson who fell silent, for what could he really say to make the experience any less humiliating, or any more bearable? Milk of magnesia could only soften the bowels to a point, and then there was the need for extra caution in cleaning up afterwards, which merely exacerbated the situation. Watson found that it was easiest to simply put him in the bathtub and pour lukewarm water over the affected area until he had removed all traces. And afterwards, the cramps that the magnesia caused via fluid depletion seized at Holmes' abdominal muscles in such a way as to aggravate the pain from the kidney injury and wring thin, breathless grunts from him each time his stomach knotted. Watson tried to keep him hydrated, but anything he poured down Holmes' throat reappeared in the retching basin within fifteen minutes.

Holmes broke his silence six days in, and the moment he did so, Watson found himself wishing for the near-catatonia to return. He started screaming for Watson in the middle of the afternoon, startling Mrs Hudson from her post next to his bed where she had offered to fill in while Watson tried to nap on the settee, but when Watson came, Holmes didn't recognize him. He cupped Holmes' face, the skin greasy and pale and hot with sickness, and told him he was right there. A second later, Holmes erupted like a badger, scratching and biting, kicking, snarling obscenities and calling Watson by the foulest names Watson had ever heard him utter. Watson ended up yelling too, shouting at Mrs Hudson in a very uncivilized manner to bring him the chloroform while he tried to hold Holmes down and avoid getting injured in the process. After they sedated him, Watson tortured himself over the decision to tie Holmes to the bed frame, but he had to do it or else risk Holmes not only harming them, but himself as well. He was a strong man and a skilled fighter, after all, and it was only luck that Holmes had not brought that to bear when he had attacked Watson. A few hours later, Holmes muddled his way back to consciousness, and Watson ended up sitting on the floor with his fingers laced behind his head while Holmes tugged uselessly at the restraints and cried, and called for him. It didn't matter how many times Watson answered; Holmes just shied from his touch and kept begging him to come.

The fever finally broke midway through the eighth afternoon, to Watson's most profound if guarded relief. By then, both of them were beyond exhausted and Holmes could hardly move under his own power. His rebellious stomach had made it next to impossible for Watson to keep him hydrated, much less nourished. Once the thermometer brought back a normal temperature, Watson coaxed a cup of water and a few spoonfuls of broth into him, and then collapsed in a fitful sleep on the bed next to him. He woke up several hours later to find Holmes wrapped around him, his ear to Watson's sternum, holding Watson's already irrevocably wrinkled shirt in a feeble vice grip as he slept. Watson sniffed quietly to contain himself and blinked rapidly at the ceiling. He and Holmes may have shared a bed for several years now, but they did not touch each other in the process. The last person who had held him like this had been Mary, and she had stopped shortly after their honeymoon. It was pathetic how strongly being clung to affected him, but he thought nothing of draping his arm over Holmes' back to return the gesture. Holmes smelled of illness and fever-induced sweat, and his hair hung in limp, greasy tufts over his forehead, and still, Watson slept the better for having him close.

* * *

"You don't have _any_ leads?"

Lestrade shook his head in silent apology. "We found the scene, but aside from footprints trampling all over the alley, there was no evidence we could use." An uncomfortable pause ensued, and then Lestrade puffed his cheeks as he blew out a world weary breath. "We found his scarf and his frock coat, and a few fivers that the wind hadn't taken yet. That's all."

Watson cast a dejected glance across the room to where Holmes sat sprawled in an awkward lump in his armchair by the fire; it still pained him to sit properly, and he looked just as ill as he had so recently been, sallow and wan, his breathing still rather short and labored. Turning back to Lestrade, Watson whispered, "But it's been two weeks."

"And there are no witnesses," Lestrade returned. He peered briefly past Watson's shoulder and the hiss of Holmes' pipe permeated the silence for a moment.

For all Watson knew, Holmes' affected disinterest was not the front that it usually was. Holmes may have actually been ignoring them, to the point of not listening at all; he had been like that of late. Watson resisted the urge to glance across the room again and said, "There must have been someone. Can't you interview the building tenants?"

Lestrade pursed his lips and studied the cup of tea that Watson had poured him when he had arrived. "Of the two buildings flanking the alley, one has no windows facing it, and the other is vacant and shuttered to keep out vagrants."

Watson was shaking his head before the movement registered. "There is no way that no one noticed, that no one passed by and heard – "

"It is not the kind of area where people take notice of a scuffle, Doctor. Folks around there learn to mind their own business."

Watson's teeth clicked as he shut his mouth to fume for a second, and then he exclaimed, "I cannot accept that."

"I know." Lestrade's mouth twisted in a grimace as he looked aside. "We're still checking pawn shops for his watch and cigarette case, but I am starting to doubt that we will find them there. These men must know that they would be wiser selling the items on the street than legitimately pawning them."

Watson shut his eyes and groaned out a long sigh. He had known that finding them would be nigh on impossible; he had known that from the start. It did not lessen the pain of hearing it actualized, nor did it diminish the slightest edge of his carefully banked temper. With his eyes still closed, Watson intoned, "There must be something."

"Doctor." A rustle of movement drew Watson's gaze back to Lestrade, who had leaned toward him across the table. "I am not giving up." He broke eye contact suddenly and drew back.

The thump of a single slippered footstep was all the warning Watson had before Holmes appeared at his side. "If you have had no luck finding the men, then perhaps you should look for the other victims."

Watson blinked up at him, peripherally aware of Lestrade doing the same. They both regarded Holmes as if he had just gone mad in their presence, though it was only his participation in the conversation that shocked them. Lestrade cleared his throat and put on a valiant show of normalcy. "You believe that there were others?"

Holmes nodded gravely, but a flicker of absent eye contact betrayed his unease. "They spoke of taking turns, and mentioned 'the last one.'" His eyelids drooped after that statement, and then he fidgeted a hand out to steal Watson's tea before retreating back to his chair with the same stealth with which he had arrived. The furtiveness was only a side effect, Watson knew, of the care that Holmes took to step firmly; the dizziness brought on by the fever and the lack of proper nourishment had not yet abated.

A dull sensation of nausea interrupted Watson's tracking of Holmes' progress, and he turned back to stare at his now empty saucer. Lestrade seemed just as discomfited, and he shifted in his chair before taking a compulsive gulp of tea. Once he had replaced the cup on its saucer, Lestrade mumbled, "If they are accustomed to working as a team, then there should be other reports. I will have Clarkey search for similar cases."

Watson offered a mute nod in response.

"How, um… How have things been?"

Watson sighed and passed a hand over his brow. Too low for Holmes to hear, he murmured, "I don't even know. He gets…lost, I suppose, and he keeps talking about buttons. I don't know what to do."

"You could consult with another physician."

Watson scowled at his own closed fist. "They would suggest a mental hospital."

Lestrade nodded; he could guess at Watson's opinion of that. "I'm sure he'll come 'round soon enough."

A mirthless puff of air escaped Watson's lungs. "It is kind of you to lie, Inspector, but we both know Holmes' tendencies. He was prone to nervous attacks long before this."

A moment passed in awkwardness, and then Lestrade softly rebuked, "You do him a discourtesy, Doctor. I know that you are worried, but Mister Holmes' mind is not so weak."

"Genius and madness are irrevocably entwined, Inspector. It is not a matter of weakness, but of rigidity. I fear that his own logic will be the death of him."

"And I fear that you underestimate his resilience. I'll be off now, Doctor. Business to attend to."

Watson frowned at the tabletop and left Lestrade to see himself out.

* * *

It had been three weeks. Holmes laid in bed in the middle of the day, listening to Nanny putter about in the sitting room, disturbing his things – _moving_ them to where they _did not_ belong. Twenty three days. He counted them now, much as he did not want to. But he couldn't help noticing each one individually as it dragged past. Holmes traced a finger over the ring on his right wrist. The marks still stood out in stark relief against the pale skin of his arms from where his scarf had bitten and chafed his skin bloody. He strongly suspected that they would scar, as the scabs broke open every time he bent his wrist, or rubbed on the cuffs of his shirts to seep pale drops of fresh blood and crust over anew. Watson had tried wrapping them with fresh, painfully white gauze, but Holmes kept ripping the bandages off; they were too binding. He should not have struggled so much; it had been pointless and destructive, and he should have just saved his strength.

Nothing felt right anymore. Holmes went through the motions and said whatever he was supposed to say – whatever was expected of Sherlock Holmes, the Great Consulting Detective, or Sherlock Holmes the World's Worst Tennant, or…whichever part he was playing that day. Watson had once asked him, years ago, which one of his guises was the real _him_. The detective? The actor? The violinist? The depressive maniac who shot holes in walls and made poetry out of the downfall of the criminal mastermind? Were any of them real at all? Holmes had not known how to answer that. He had invented so many guises and lived under them for so long that Watson's question had actually caused him a small degree of apprehension. He could not have actually said that, however, so he had shrugged and replied, trying to be flippant, "Sherlock Holmes, the friend and flat mate of Doctor John Watson." And it had backfired on him because Watson had taken it as some sort of vaunted privilege, and coveted it. Holmes could tell; it was plain and disconcertingly bare in the earliest drafts of each of his blasted stories. Scribbles and chicken scratch about _him_ and his _powers _of deduction, and Watson himself a mere adornment in a pretty tale, running about with his chest puffed out like a peacock at being called the most intimate acquaintance of Sherlock Holmes. One of these days, Holmes thought he might like to meet that strange, cold detective from Watson's stories; he seemed a very unlikely character, and rather unpleasant on top of it. Sometimes, he wondered if that was really how Watson saw him, and if so, what was it about that cold caricature that could so draw a man like him?

With the windows open to let in the early spring air, Holmes could detect the reek of the Thames, and it reminded him of sewers and putrid fingers and filth. The space behind the house where Mrs Hudson deposited the rubbish had become overrun by stray cats during the winter, and it smelled the same as the cobblestones of the alley: ammonia and feline waste and dead rodents molding in puddles of rainwater. He could not go out there, not even to refill the coal scuttle. It was pathetic and he hated himself for it, and yet he could not bring himself to go. Luckily, Mrs Hudson did not seem to mind; she gave the chore to the maid and left him be.

Holmes sighed and rolled over to curl about a spare pillow. Watson had gone out on rounds for the first time since that night; he had neglected his practice for three weeks already, but not having him there was already eroding the tenuous calm in which Holmes had existed for the past twenty three days. Watson had a life outside of him; Holmes needed to respect that. And besides, this deplorable, pathetic reliance on Watson's mere presence had to stop. Holmes considered going down to Scotland Yard to inquire about his…about _the _investigation simply because it sounded like the proactive thing to do. A healthy response to recent events. He very quickly decided against it, however; he didn't care what Lestrade was doing. As far as Holmes could tell, Watson had abandoned his insane and misguided quest for vengeance, and that was all he wanted - for Watson to stop treating him like…like a god damn maiden on the verge of breaking apart. Being molly-coddled just made him feel…

_…like a woman. Soft and pale like a woman…_

Holmes scrambled out of bed and yanked at his hair. Stop thinking about it – just _stop_. It's been twenty three days. It's done with, it's over, the infection has cleared, the marks are almost gone, there is _no reason_ to keep thinking about it! It's not even a real case. It's burglary and assault – it's _petty_! And as such, wholly unworthy of his notice or consideration.

"Nanny!" Holmes stalked out into the sitting room and stabbed a finger at the pile of newspapers in Mrs Hudson's hands. "Everything is exactly where it is meant to be – I insist that you put those back where you found them."

Mrs Hudson gave him an unimpressed look – arrogance suited the woman, damn her and her infernal…_tidying_. "Will you be having luncheon, Mister Holmes?"

Holmes dropped his arm and prowled over to the sideboard. He needed a cigarette. Now where had he left the damn case – no. No, he didn't have that anymore. He knew that. Why did he keep forgetting? He wasn't that absent minded, no matter what Watson liked to tell people in ironic jest. Pipes – he would have a pipe instead.

"Mister Holmes?"

The sound of newspapers settling on the floor brought Holmes back to himself and he blinked at the bullet holes in the wallpaper in front of him. "I require a cigarette." Announcing such was stupid and he knew it, but he found himself doing it over and over again. Irrationality irked him, especially in himself, and he spared a moment to snuff at the sideboard and grit his teeth. His erratic behavior had long since become tiresome even to himself. He could only imagine how Watson must feel.

Mrs Hudson came to a stop beside him and craned her neck to catch his gaze. "The Doctor left instructions that you are to eat something for luncheon. Do you have a preference?"

Holmes refused to meet her eyes and let his own flicker off in the opposite direction, lids sinking to half mast. _I would prefer you to go to hell._

The hand on his arm nearly startled him out of his own skin and he scuttled sideways, rounding to put the sideboard at his back.

Mrs Hudson took her hand back and clasped it into its match. "Not the buttons again, sir. Lunch. What would you like to eat?"

Holmes huffed and clenched his jaw for a moment, trying to recollect having said something. He must have slipped. Can't have that. Can't be coddled either – he's not a child. And now she was giving him that sympathetic look – damn her thrice over, and her looks. His gaze had been roving without purpose across half the room and he forced it to still. Overcoat. Blue. Watson's. Spilled gravy on the lapel last night at dinner. The stain has set by now; he'll be irritated by it. "Gravy."

"Gravy and biscuits? I think we can manage that." Mrs Hudson patted his arm as she swooped past him and he only just managed not to cringe. Can't have that. Not a poor, simpering little…

_…poor little poppet. Are you gonna be good for us, poppet?_

Enough. Need to do something now. The scrapbooks need updating. That will do.

Holmes spent the rest of the afternoon making something of a mess on the floor with his newspaper clippings and the glue bottle. No patterns caught his eye so he considered it a wasted effort, but there was no telling what might be important later. He also organized the unopened mail, but couldn't manage the energy required to read any of it. No matter. Watson would be home soon, and the Doctor would no doubt insist on going out somewhere to save Holmes from stagnation…or himself…whichever. He was tired, though – half asleep where he sat beside the uneaten biscuits. The tiger skin rug beckoned from three feet away, so he crawled over to it and slithered himself into a comfortable position. Just a brief nap. Watson would wake him when he came home…

_The air reeked of sewage and ammonia and he couldn't breathe. He could see the shoes again, though, look at the shoes. And the cuff links. The cuff links were right in front of him. Right there – so close with Right Arm Man holding his head…or was it the other one? Or…military issue boots and forty two buttons…did he count Fourth Man's buttons? No…no, dammit, he didn't. No, that's bad – he has to know how many – _

_"Gonna come for me, precious?" _

_Holmes flinched and tried to cry out, only to have Right Arm shove deeper, and he choked instead. Choked on it. On _him_. Top Man had his hand down there again, between his legs, no – it doesn't feel good. It hurts. It's not good, it hurts. _

_"Ow! Stupid cunt!" _

_Right Arm man recoiled and his prick slipped from Holmes' mouth, thank god. He gagged and spit on the pavement to try to rid himself of the taste. Don't be sick. Don't throw up. Don't be sick. Don't let them see it. Don't. Top Man thrust hard and then bore down and held himself there, and Holmes went rigid in an effort not to react to the way that felt – heat and billows and sparks like shards of melting glass, and why the hell did it feel like that? His body twitched at random when Top Man did not pull back, and he couldn't stop himself from squirming at the sensation, pressure and tingling at the base of his spine, legs shaking where he had ineffectually braced them, as if Top Man weren't pinning him flat on his stomach. He gnawed on his lip to keep from crying out, and the fact that he needed the distraction at all brought a fresh flush to his face. None of this should affect him so.  
_

_"What's the matter, eh?" Top Man demanded._

_"Little slut has _teeth,_ is what's the matter!"_

_Holmes swallowed rapidly and tried to twist away, hands tugging uselessly at the restraints, but Top Man's weight held him against the pavement, and he could hear…what was that? Someone crying – it sounded like a child…oh god, don't let there be a child here. One of his – one of his little Irregulars. They shouldn't see this - no one should see this. He could feel the slickness of blood on his palms – he had chafed his wrists bloody. Stop struggling, you'll make it worse._

_"Teeth, you say?" Top Man lowered himself down along Holmes' back, crushing him – the man was heavy; he'd be suffocated – _

_Can't suffocate. Can't die here. Just breathe. Watson's at home. Just get through it and go home, and…and buttons. Forty two of them. Except for Fourth Man. He has more buttons. Don't leave a body. Count the buttons._

_"Now, little poppet. What did I tell you about using teeth, huh?" Top Man wrapped a stinking, meaty palm around Holmes' head and turned him so he had to breathe in the fetid breath that Top Man exhaled. Rotting gums. Smelled like something first run over by a hansom and then doused in cheap ale. Repugnant. "Come now, precious. What did I tell you?"_

_Holmes squirmed, or tried to, but it hurt – the ground was gritty beneath him, and with Top Man's weight pressing him down, he could feel the gravel digging into his…no, into his own…no. Top Man settled more of his weight down and Holmes whimpered as he felt the man's prick press deeper. At least the fitful sparks and washes of heat subsided. Holmes groaned in relief._

_ "Answer me, poppet." Top Man nibbled around the shell of Holmes' ear as he spoke and Holmes struggled to try and turn his head away. "What did I say about the teeth?" He punctuated his question by ducking down and sinking his teeth into Holmes shoulder._

_Holmes gasped, and then mewled when one of Top Man's fingers found its way to his lips. Even though speaking invited insertion of the fingers, Holmes replied, "Don't bite him." He cringed from the fingers – would rather taste the _thing_ than have Top Man's fingers in his mouth again. "Please…"_

_Top Man chuckled darkly around the flesh in his mouth and Holmes felt the skin break like a sheer cloth stretched on a loom, punctured and then torn by the tension. "Mmm…" Top Man let up enough to speak with his lips brushing the damaged skin. "Please _what_, Mister Holmes?"_

_Please… What did he want to hear? What did – Top Man was suckling at the jagged mark he had made on Holmes' shoulder, Christ - what answer was he looking for? "Please, I'll…try again. Please."_

_Now the others laughed too; one of them even whistled. A cat call. That made sense. There were cats here – he could smell them; they had marked their territory. Oh god…what if they were rabid? He'd been bitten – people turned feral vicious and bit people – Top Man could be rabid – _

_Don't be ridiculous. By Lord Harry, keep a grip on yourself. _

_"Try _what_ again, poppet?" He licked along Holmes jaw and Holmes cringed again, to no effect. "Come now. You can tell us." He lifted his hips and then jabbed himself down again._

_Holmes heard himself bleat like a dying sheep, and if it were possible for him to blush further, he would have turned scarlet._

_"What do you want to try again?"_

_"I…want…please…"_

_Top Man inhaled a shuddering breath and thrust again, and it was one of _those_ thrusts, the ones that made Holmes shake and gasp and see white for a second. "Say it, poppet. Say what you want."_

_This was not happening. This was not happening. He was at home with Watson, smoking his pipe, he was at home, everything was fine. "I whu – want to suck – "_

_"Want to suck his cock?"_

_Holmes whined against the fingers that were still dancing and prodding at his lips, a fractured and desolate sound like wind in an empty house, and then squeezed his eyes shut and choked, "Yes."_

_Top Man groaned and sucked at the hinge of his jaw, and Holmes strangled a sob before it could come out. Don't let them see you cry. Don't. "Hear that, boys? Good little whore, isn't he? Asks so prettily. What do you say? Should we give him what he wants?"_

_Holmes shook his head as much as he was able with Top Man's hand digging into his jaw. "Please." Please, just stop.  
_

_Someone laughed; Holmes didn't know who. But there was no time to figure it out because Top Man was pushing back up onto his hands and knees, and that thing was pressing at his lips again – don't gag, don't bite, count the buttons, go home – _

"_Holmes._"

Hands on him, in the small of his back, and on his shoulder, rolling him over, brush of fingers on his hipbone, and –

"_NO_!" Holmes lashed out and hit someone, but then the hands were back, and he was being pushed down, restrained, unrelenting grip on his wrists, and –

"Holmes! For god's sake, it's me. It's just me!"

Someone in the room stopped yelling then, thank goodness, because just the sound of it was shredding his own throat. He tried to wrench his hands free but he couldn't, and god, he was going to cry – he could hear it, he was already halfway there, blubbering incoherently like a half-butchered puppy, and he couldn't breathe through the convulsions of his diaphragm.

"Wake up. Holmes, open your eyes – you're safe. You're at home, you're safe!"

Holmes howled a wordless denial and kicked at whoever was holding him. He felt his head strike back against the floor as he thrashed, impacting hard enough to jar his teeth and cut off the sound of his own voice. And there was a weight on top of him, and hands, and he could smell putrefaction and ammonia thick enough to choke on. The weight moved to better pin him and he yelped as he kicked again.

"Ow!"

_Stupid cunt. _

Holmes found one of his hands free and he started pummeling someone's ribs, grunting with the effort, and then both of his hands were loose, and the other man was holding his face, and –

"Oh sweet Mary. Mister Holmes!"

"Holmes, it's okay. You're okay. Open your eyes, you're okay."

Holmes found fabric under his hands and fisted it in an effort to get the man off. He could hear himself but he couldn't stop, snarling and sobbing at the same time, trying to be vicious and failing, like a wounded animal in a cage. The man moved over him, and Holmes shrieked as he punched at the shadowy shape looming in front of his face. Watson would be horrified if he could see this. Hysterical. Panicked. Mustn't let him know. Ever. Never ever – it's shameful, and weak, and Sherlock Holmes isn't weak. Just like that man in the stories that Watson writes - he never loses control.

"Shh-shh…Holmes, you're okay. You can stop now. It's okay."

Holmes hiccupped and then choked over the mucous collecting in the back of his throat. Fingers in his hair. He wailed, "Noooo…_no_…" His knee struck soft tissue and he jabbed it into the man's ribs again, but he had no leverage there wasn't force enough behind it to knock the man off. He pushed at the face hovering over him instead, but it shook his hands away.

"I know. It's okay, old boy. Calm down now." Soothing words. Soft and gentle.

Holmes stopped hitting, but he continued to push feebly at the man's chest and his knee was lodged against someone's side, and…Watson. It was only Watson. It was… He blinked at the familiar waistcoat twisted between white knuckles and tried to reign in his breathing but it sounded wrong. Noisy and…he was still panting _no_ every time he exhaled. That was it. Be quiet now and stop shaking. Stupid…it's nothing. Get hold of yourself.

"There. Can you breathe with me? Slow and deep." Watson's fingers combed softly through his hair. "Just like that. That's good, Holmes. Everything's alright."

Holmes swallowed but it turned into some sort of hiccup, and then he had to suck in a wet and ragged breath that fluttered and caught in his chest, teeth hovering over his bottom lip. He shoved again and growled in a rather pitiful manner like a garbled wind sheer or a songbird drowning in a bucket, but Watson didn't budge. Holmes thought he might have been glad of it. Watson was solid. He was there, always there except when he wasn't. Good, solid, dependable old Watson.

"Okay," Watson murmured. He shifted his other hand to cup the back of Holmes' head. "You're okay." Holmes felt him probing at the crown of his head to see if he had damaged it against the floor. "Mrs Hudson, I don't suppose we could trouble you for a pot of tea?"

"Of course," Mrs Hudson replied. Her voice trembled. "There's already a kettle on; I'll just steep it for you."

"Thank you," Watson answered in that same gentle tone, a rumble like a giant purr.

Holmes turned his head to watch her leave, but he could only make out a streaked impression of the colors in her dress moving toward to the door.

"Alright, old boy. Why don't we get you cleaned up?"

Holmes concentrated on breathing for a moment, head spinning from ebbing panic and having hit it on the floor, and then he rasped, "Watson."

"Yes, Holmes. Can you get up now?"

"Watson, I miscounted."

Watson didn't reply right away, but he kept circling his thumb in Holmes' hair. "Don't worry about it. We need to clean you up, okay?"

"But the buttons." Was that actually his voice? It wavered and creaked all over the place – old rusted iron gate caught in the wind. "I didn't get them all. Fourth Man – "

"That's alright," Watson assured him. "Let's just get you off the floor, okay?"

Holmes tried to swallow but found that he couldn't, and that bothered him. He whined low in his throat and squirmed to get away from something that wasn't there – felt the tiger skin rug slide away under the heel of one foot – and then his eyes somehow found Watson's.

Watson smiled; it was like sunlight. "Hello."

Holmes blinked, and then he fell to examining Watson's clothes. He snuffle-coughed and the wetness in his eyes gave the illusion that Watson had crystallized, as if he were made of sparkling slivers of liquid glass caught in a shivering flare of mercury. "You stopped at the bookseller's on the way home. There is dust on your cuff from the shelves in the back. It is of a distinctive color, due to the disintegrating mortar of the bricks. You were looking at the medical texts."

"Yes, I was." Watson's smiled again, and Holmes had to look away. He heard Watson sigh, and then Watson patted his chest. "Come on. This old leg of mine won't thank me for crawling about on the floor much longer."

Holmes' breath hitched again as Watson disentangled himself, and then he let Watson pull him to his feet.

"Steady on, now." Watson's hands came up to grasp his elbows. "Can't have you falling over. Knowing you, you'll brain yourself on the hearth stones."

Holmes realized he was swaying a bit, but he couldn't manage to stop the room from tilting.

"Okay – hold up there." Watson's grip tightened and he managed to collapse Holmes into a chair, rather than back onto the floor. "Look at me."

Holmes blinked; he swore his eyes were wobbling in their sockets, but he tracked a wayward finger back down to Watson's face. Watson had knelt in front of him.

"There's a good fellow. Now just look here." Watson peered critically at him, too much eye contact, and then he patted Holmes' knee. "I need the truth now, Holmes. Have you been at the needle today?"

Holmes stared blankly at the open concern on Watson's face, and then peered past the top of Watson's head to think. "No. Not since Thursday."

Watson nodded, then asked, "You realize that _today_ is Thursday, right?"

Holmes wrinkled his brow, and then amended, "Last Thursday."

"Good. That's good. Thank you for being honest with me, Holmes."

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"Um…" Watson appeared to stop himself from shaking his head, and then he smiled again, but it wasn't the same smile he'd offered a minute ago. This one was just a part of his mustache; it didn't reach his eyes. Rather than sit there dumbly, Watson extracted a handkerchief and used it to wipe all of the cloying wetness from Holmes' face.

Holmes allowed the treatment, but only because he was occupied in staring at the bunched up tiger skin rug over Watson's shoulder.

Some little time later, Watson folded the handkerchief back up and stuffed it into his shirt cuff. A soldier's habit. "Are you better enough to walk now?"

Holmes sucked some moisture into his mouth and then realized that he had to answer. "Where are we going?"

"Downstairs to the wash room. Is that alright?"

"Why do you keep asking?"

Watson frowned. "Because… Holmes, do you know what just happened?"

Holmes let his eyelids drooped and studied the way that Watson dimmed before him. "I feel odd. Did Nanny put something in the tea? I told you, she's been trying to poison me for years."

A tiny sound of mirth escaped Watson's lips. "Hardly. Odd, how? Were you asleep just now?"

Holmes nodded. "I took a nap."

That seemed to relieve Watson. "Good. It was just a nightmare, then."

Holmes gave him a hard look. "What else would it have been?"

Watson's eyes flickered away and then back. "You remember when we first met, how, um…innocent things would startle me?"

Of course Holmes remembered. The war had done terrible things to Watson's mind. "Surely you're not suggesting that I have a nervous disorder?"

"I considered it a possibility."

"I am nothing like you."

Watson bit his lower lip, his face darkening as he averted his gaze. "Yes, well. Be that as it may, I thought when I first came in here that you might…" His lip curled and he flared his nostrils. "Never mind. Clearly, you are stronger than that."

Holmes balked. "You have misunderstood me. I only meant that you were in a war. I have never been subjected to such a thing. It is not reasonable to compare us in that regard."

Watson's head tipped to one side and he shot Holmes a wary, sidelong look.

As if it should have been obvious – which it was – Holmes told him, "You are not weak. I would never imply that you were."

Watson sucked in a pensive breath and then let it out slowly. His face softened in the process, though some sort of edge lingered. "Holmes, there are times when I am convinced that you must be an utter fool." He paused, then solemnly added, "And neither are you."

Holmes gave him a bewildered look. Why would he say that? God, Holmes thought; he'd said something in his sleep. What was it? What had Watson heard?

"I ask again. Can you walk now?"

Holmes nodded. In one sense, he felt much more sure of his balance now; in another sense, far less so.

"Good." Watson grasped the arm of Holmes' chair and used it to help lever himself to his feet.

He kept his body canted to the left, Holmes noticed. His leg…tussling on the floor had no doubt aggravated it. He would make Watson sit in his chair after dinner and accept a hot towel from Mrs Hudson to ease the cramping that would come later.

"I do believe I've split your lip." Watson held out a hand. "Come on."

Holmes waved him off and stumbled upright. Then he frowned. "Did I hit you?"

With a wry grimace, Watson replied, "Several times. But I forgive you." He jerked his head toward the door and then started off in that direction.

Holmes regarded him dubiously, but trailed after him anyway. "I apologize. Have I injured you badly?"

"Not at all." Watson pushed the sitting room door open – Mrs Hudson must not have closed it all the way – and motioned him through. "Do you want to tell me what you were dreaming about?"

"No."

"That's fine. I was only offering."

"I do not require your 'friendly ear'."

From Watson's tone, he had just rolled his eyes. "Holmes, I am hardly offering in my capacity as a doctor."

"Oh." Holmes paused to be sure of his grip on the banister, and then started down. "I still do not wish to tell you."

"Alright." Watson ambled down the stairs in his wake, the cadence of his footsteps uneven in the most familiar manner. When they reached the ground floor, Watson hesitantly inquired, "Is that the first such dream you've had?"

Holmes cast a severe glare over his shoulder. "I just said, I do not wish to speak of it."

With a mollifying gesture, Watson said, "I did not ask for content."

Holmes chuffed in annoyance. "No."

"No, you have not, or – "

"No, I am not having this conversation." It was indeed the first time he had experienced anything so vivid while sleeping. But he saw no need to inform Watson of it. If it persisted, then perhaps disclosure might become necessary, but not now.

Watson nodded and followed him into the wash room. "Understood."

Holmes glowered at the water pump and griped, "That is quite enough clucking, Mother Hen."

"Indeed," Watson replied dryly. "I grow weary of it anyway."

Holmes felt his limbs go faintly numb at the rush of panic his words engendered. Then he forced himself to complete his reach for the wash rag and dip it deliberately into the water bowl.

Hands on his arms, just below his shoulders, left Holmes rigidly still, and Watson stepped close enough that he could feel heat along his back. "Steady," Watson murmured. After Holmes had uncoiled enough to rest his hands on the rim of the water bowl, Watson said, "I did not mean to imply that I was weary of looking after you. You know I could never tire of you."

"I do not require 'looking after' any more than you do." It was a weak protest at best.

Watson directed a smile at the tip of Holmes' ear; Holmes only caught it because he was looking at their reflections in the mirror, and Watson didn't think Holmes could see the expression. A hazy sense of confusion billowed through Holmes like fog to see such a smile on Watson's face. There was very little to betray it in the curve of his mouth, but his eyes… Holmes could not recall having seen the like before. "My dear Holmes, I could not agree more."

Holmes frowned, an expression that seemed to pull at unrelated parts of his body. There was a double meaning in that statement; he was certain of it. Rather than respond, Holmes reserved judgment on the sentiment and grunted his dismissal of pretty much everything as he wrung out the rag and concentrated on wiping away the blood that had already crusted in the corner of his lip. His eyes dropped abruptly as he turned to consideration of the other sentiment that Watson had voiced, that Watson would never tire of him. In point of fact, he had tired of Holmes once before. "While I believe you to always have the kindest of intentions, I am well aware of the inconvenience I have caused you of late. You have been remarkably accommodating."

"Holmes…" Watson released one of his arms, but not the other, and slipped around to look at Holmes without the buffer of a reflective surface to shield them. "You are not a burden."

"I am also of no practical use at the moment. But I will be taking cases again, I assure you."

Watson's face turned severe. "Holmes, I don't give a cat's fancy if you never take a case again. That is not the only reason I am your friend."

"But it was the first." And the surest to hold Watson's interest to the exclusion of all of the little annoyances that Holmes was capable of perpetrating on any given day. The span of time between cases drove Watson away out of unbridled irritation just as surely as it drove Holmes into the black fits that so wore at Watson's patience. That was what had driven him to seek out Mary all those years ago. If Holmes became too cumbersome again – too reliant on Watson's presence, too demanding of his time, too needy, too ungrateful – then Watson would leave again. A man could put up with only so much before he cut his losses. Holmes supposed that he was fortunate to have made a compulsive gambler his only friend; it took Watson longer than it took other men to break away from a losing streak.

Holmes could feel Watson frowning, indicated by the shift of the hand still gripping his arm, so he did not bother looking when Watson asked, "Why do you do this to yourself?"

Holmes licked away a droplet of blood that had seeped onto his lip, then shrugged. An incisor had pierced the inner lining of his lip and he swallowed the taste of copper. Holmes risked glancing up into the mirror to see Watson's reaction and found such a profound sadness in Watson's face that he tilted his head to regard it better. "Contrary to your beliefs, I _do_ read your stories, Watson. I am well aware of which traits you admire in me."

Watson's brow wrinkled. "No, actually, I don't think you are."

"Then pray, enlighten me," Holmes demanded. And for once, he thought that he actually wanted to know. It was unsettling to realize that in the past, he had been ignorant of the exact opposite want.

Watson stared at him, eyes meeting in glass, and then he let his gaze fall to the arm he still grasped. "Holmes, you could spend your days knitting tea cozies for all I care. I only want to see you in some semblance of happiness."

Holmes stared into the mirror, at the side of Watson's averted face. He noted his own features softening as he looked, but if he hadn't been able to see it, he would not have known. Uncomfortable now, Holmes merely mumbled, "I am not proficient at knitting; perhaps you should add that to your list."

"Are you ever going to let me live that down?" Watson waited long enough to know, from long association, that Holmes did not intend to reply, so he offered, "If it is so important to you, then perhaps we could sort through the mail. There are bound to be a fair few missives of interest, seeing as how they've been collecting for a month."

Only twenty three days, actually. Holmes found something else to look at, far to one side where the bathtub sat. He could taste the disgust on his tongue when he admitted, "I flinch even from you most of the time. How am I to work a case?"

"Something easy, then," Watson replied. "Nothing you have to leave Baker Street for."

Something boring, Holmes' mind translated.

He was not aware of having sighed until Watson rested his forehead against his temple and echoed the sound. "This will pass." He tilted his head just far enough to press dry lips against the hinge of Holmes' jaw. "I promise."

Holmes cringed and twisted from Watson's grasp before he knew what he was doing. To cover his momentary lapse – _Top Man's groan, a wet suckling of putrid lips – Say it, poppet. Say what you want_ – Holmes flung the wash rag at the dry sink and snarled, "You don't know that."

Watson didn't call after him as he stormed out, and Holmes wasn't sure what that meant. The evening editions of the papers were laying on the table in the foyer, however, so Holmes snatched them up before flinging himself at the staircase and out of sight of Watson, who stood framed forlornly in the washroom doorway, not watching him.


	5. Chapter 5

Holmes barely spoke for several days after the sitting room incident. The scattering of faded bruises and marks all over his body stood out in fresh relief where his clothes did not hide them, yellow and green against the lingering sickly, almost translucent cast that his skin had taken on during his illness, like the white face paint that Holmes kept in his disguise kit to use as an undercoating when he needed to change his complexion. He took to smiling at Watson at odd intervals, too, but only as if he thought that he was supposed to. It made little sense that he would do such a thing, since Holmes had never been known for doing what he was supposed to in a polite construct. He would offer the expression and then stare expectantly at Watson, waiting for a favorable reaction. Watson couldn't give him what he wanted in that respect. If anything, the incongruity of Holmes' careless smile – that languidly pleased, boneless one that he often adopted right after solving a particularly harrowing case – set against his stubble-shadowed, chalky cheeks and interspersed with half-healed cuts and the dim vestiges of bruises shaped like other men's hands proved unnaturally disturbing to Watson. He dropped his eyes every time, just to avoid seeing any more of it than necessary. As a consequence, he also missed Holmes' reactions to his lacking responses, and he was glad of it; he couldn't bear to see any more disappointment on that old familiar face.

Contrary to Watson's expectations, Holmes did not take up the needle in earnest. That did not stop Watson from hiding the Morocco case whenever he saw it laying about, and neither did it prevent Holmes from deducing its new whereabouts with his usual degree of uncanny accuracy. It would disappear from Watson's possession and reappear on the table next to Holmes' chair, only to be pilfered and squirreled away in a new hole, but the amount of solution in the cocaine bottle wavered only slightly – one dose, perhaps two total. Watson could not claim that this relieved him of his direst concern. All it meant was that Holmes had firmly grounded himself in limbo and was no longer even making an effort to process through events. If he was not staving off a black fit, then he was neither bored nor bothered, nor confused and overwhelmed and in need of escape from it. He did seem to be pondering things, but he did so in the same objective if fervent manner that he bestowed upon his cases. It was an unnatural drive, however, and devoid of either inquiry or progress. Holmes had mastered the motions of introspection, and yet for all Watson could tell, there were no concerted thoughts in his head as he obsessed over his pipe in silence, or shredded newspapers in his habitual scouring of the agony columns.

Watson's nerves grated to see Holmes fluttering about their rooms like a specter of himself, glancing through the mail accumulating into drifts on the mantle without opening a single piece of it, his voice soft and rich and absent when he spoke at all. Too gentle. In fact, everything he did was too gentle. When he played his violin, the bow only whispered tunelessly across the strings as if the sound of it were haunting the wood. When he took his meals – and he did not skip a single one, as if the prospect of starting an argument with Watson were too much to contemplate – he picked at his food with dainty fingers, slow to consume it all though he kept steadily placing bits of it in his mouth until it was all gone. When he folded the newspaper to a new page, it was nearly silent, and he had long since given up commenting with scorn on the petty headlines and announcements to be found therein - missing jewelry and smashed windows, lost dogs and parasols, engagements, the schedules of various society types, gossip about the royal family... Watson tried to entice him with a few prospective clients who came to their door, mostly poorer folk scraping out their last hope on Holmes' doorstep. But each time Watson asked him if he would consent to an interview, Holmes would grow nervous and drum his fingers on the arm of his chair, or scuttle from the room with his dressing gown closed tight about him to hide the marks that persisted in discoloring the delicate skin of his throat. In the end, Watson turned them all away, and though he offered his warmest apologies, a courtesy was not what they had come for.

The slamming of doors now made Holmes jump and look around, wild and startled for a bare instant before he smiled – gentle, sheepish smile – and settled back with a murmured apology more like Watson in the odd days following his return from Afghanistan than like himself, back when Watson had discovered with no small degree of embarrassment that Maiwand had left him gun shy. Knowing what that feels like - how the powerlessness of an etched fear in a safe place could leave a man ashamed to be skittish in his own home - Watson gentled his own manner to match Holmes' quieter one, and he caught at doors so that they snicked shut with only a faint click to betray the settling of the tumblers. Holmes stayed away from his chemical table for so long that the colored stains patching his hands and fingers faded entirely away. Watson could not recall having ever seen Holmes' hands unblemished, sans split knuckles and sticking plaster, his cuticles devoid of ink stains, pristine and pale as the rest of him; it was eerie.

Holmes drifted silently out of bed in the mornings, pulling off nightclothes and slipping on shirts and trousers as if the cloth were made of water, elegant in a way that Holmes had never been. It was not that Holmes was normally an ungainly fellow; in Watson's mind, he had always possessed a sort of grace that came from confidence and agility, honed in the boxing ring and practiced on street thugs - that brilliance that extended beyond his mind into something far less tangible, that in other men was dark. And it was that natural intensity, the jittery and irrepressible, nearly turbulent energy that used to characterize his every breath, that had all but bled out of him. The absence expressed itself as elegance, and that wholly different kind of grace that only came at the price of knowing terrible truths. Holmes had become subdued to the point that Watson spent an entire afternoon searching the house for evidence that Holmes had gotten his hands on morphine or laudanum or chloral, convinced that he was tranquilizing himself rather than indulging in cocaine because cocaine let him think with alarming clarity, and the other drugs could have perhaps shut his mind down. There was nothing, however.

What Watson gradually came to understand was that he was witnessing the loss of that unique sort of innocence that most people shed in childhood. Good and bad things, to the young, could be clearly delineated and rigorously kept separate; there was no gray, and so no confusion about blame or forgiveness or moving on when bad things happened. It had not occurred to Watson that Holmes still possessed that sort of moral compass - that blatant simplicity in deciding who was right and who was wrong, who should be punished and who has been punished enough already. Holmes was not naive - he had witnessed first hand, as had Watson, that bad things often happened to good people for no reason. A man can know many things without understanding them, however. No one notices the loss of such innocence in a child, obscured as the transition is by natural maturation and age. To see such a thing destroyed in a grown man, however, was an offense grievous enough to rend even the bystanders in two. The worst part for Watson was that he hadn't even known that the innocence was there until he noticed the systematic dismantling of it and knew that he could never give that back to his friend.

Although Watson knew this, that some things could not be undone, he could not believe that this state would be permanent. His life had narrowed when Mary died, first to case notes and fading memories and an empty house, and then to the preservation of Holmes himself. He needed Holmes to remind him how to live, to make his heart race and his mind tie itself in knots...to let him care about someone other than himself. Watson had a self-destructive streak too, embodied in a tendency to gamble and a bloodline of men brought low by drink. Holmes kept him from dwelling on those impulses, from ruining himself under a false impression that no one would notice if he went down the same path as his brother, alone. For now, Watson could allow that Holmes required a respite. It reminded Watson of those first few months after Maiwand when he had himself wafted aimlessly about in the mess of his own life trying to simply stay afloat, too tired and thinly drawn to devote time or energy or thought to being traumatized by what he had been through. Eventually, the knowledge and reality had crashed down on him, but when it had finally happened, he had already been living at Baker Street, and Holmes had been, for lack of a better term, supportive. It would not have been obvious to anyone else, but even after a mere two months of sharing space with the man, Watson had been able to discern the care in Holmes' demeanor. It had been enough, and Watson had survived his past well. He needed Holmes to do the same, but the quiet terror that he might not come back from this gnawed at Watson during every idle moment. He could see Holmes slipping away from him, and while Watson fought tooth and nail not to lose his grip on his oldest and dearest friend, Holmes himself did not even attempt to grasp back.

That did not mean that Watson had any intention of conceding the battle; he would go down with that ship if he could not keep it afloat because he was incapable of giving it up. It was far too late for Watson to save himself; his chance passed the moment Holmes came back to him. Back _for_ him. So he did what small, inconsequential things he could. He bribed Mrs Hudson to cook foods that he knew Holmes enjoyed – not that much cajoling was needed, for her own concern was evident – so that at least Holmes would put on a few pounds worth of something he liked. Holmes would have eaten anything that Watson put in front of him, of that Watson was certain, but he refused to take advantage of Holmes' complacency. Watson refrained from comment when Holmes spent increasing amounts of time in the bathtub, coming out with pruned fingers and damp hair and skin that had been scrubbed an angry red. He indulged Holmes with tickets to see Wagner, and invitations to art exhibits that he had obtained with the help of grateful and wealthy patients, and reservations at Marcini's and Simpson's. Holmes would not leave the house for any of them, but Watson persisted in his attempts. He finally managed to coax Holmes out to the park when the weather briefly broke and then let him sit on a bench and stare silently at a few roosting geese for hours, until it became clear that his mind had wandered completely away. Watson then led a frighteningly complacent Holmes back to Baker Street in the gathering dusk, trying not to be disturbed by the empty, directionless rambling of his gaze, or the way he kept his eyes downcast whenever they passed people on the sidewalk. The way he walked too close, even allowing for their linked arms. The way he angled himself toward Watson as if afraid to be caught wanting him near.

Holmes' appetite decreased eventually, as Watson had expected it to, though he still ate whatever Watson asked of him. Holmes took to smoking more in the evenings - more even than was his usual wont - and after a while, he only ever held his violin in silence, the bow discarded somewhere on the opposite side of the room. His voice remained gruff and gentle, but he used it less and less, answering Watson with single words devoid of inflection of any kind. He eventually stopped bothering to dress in the morning and simply wandered about the sitting room in his ratty old dressing gown, not pacing so much as meandering aimlessly until he met an obstacle that caused him to change direction. Watson encouraged him to take his wanderings to the street, but it soon struck him that Holmes would only leave the house during daylight hours, and even then, only if Watson left with him. He wasn't sure if Holmes were doing such on purpose, or if the inclination had slipped his rapidly narrowing field of awareness, but either way, knowing that took the appeal out of the sorts of long walks that Watson had enticed Holmes to in the past, usually as a diversion from the slow spread of ennui. Holmes had always loved London - loved to blend into it and lose himself to disguises and crowds, to protect it as if its citizenry were his responsibility and his alone. To sit in the center of it like a spider hidden in a beautiful and intricate web, ignoring flies in favor of moths. And now he feared to even step out his front door, lest London hurt him again.

It was a familiar descent, in some ways. In others, completely foreign. Holmes falling into a black fit was normally a conflagration of chaos and loud, angry protestations of boredom and everyone else's idiocy - a vague intimation that the world owed him stimulation and had failed him by leaving him to stagnate. There should have been noise and destruction, broken furniture, exploded chemical beakers, but Holmes' melancholy did not come accompanied by anger or frustration, or even desperation this time, and the pining after a worthy adversary was absent. This strangely silent and graceful fall proceeded almost without notice, until Watson woke up one morning wondering if this were actually a descent at all.

Lestrade was able to find nothing save rumors, though he told Watson that he had personally inspected every dock worker he came across for the tattoo that Holmes had described on one. It was eerie to hear Lestrade refer to the attackers by Holmes' nicknames for them: Left Arm Man and Top Man…Fourth Man… Watson did eventually go out to the scene of the crime with Lestrade, more out of a morbid need for self flagellation than because he could actually be of use. Some part of Watson burned to know just how bad it had been so that he could accurately gauge the amount of guilt he should carry for not being there to stop it. It was a disheartening little excursion to a forlorn hole between rundown tenements. The air smelled of cat piss and garbage, just as Holmes had upon his return, and Watson morosely marked the site in his mind as the unremarkable alley where his dearest and only friend's life had been forever altered. It was an event that no one else would ever mark, and an alley that would never garner more than a disdainful glance and a wrinkled nose for the stench of it, but at the moment, it was the most important place in both his and Holmes' lives. And it didn't even matter because there was nothing in it to help Watson set things right again.

Probably with neutral intentions, Lestrade remarked that in other circumstances, he might have waved the whole matter under Holmes' nose to try to get a lead. Innocent comment or not, it stung. There were some incongruities that might have enticed Holmes, had it not been all about him already: the gentleman organizer, the fact that the thing of most value – Watson's fifty pound wager – had been returned so that the only real theft was of a somewhat valueless watch and an easily traceable cigarette case, neither of which had appeared in pawn shops yet. The fact that they had known Holmes by name, the fact that they had let him live to possibly identify them later rather than leave him safely dead… And why like that? Why specifically attack him like that when knifing him or beating him bloody would have put him out of commission with less fuss? Leaving aside the fact that Holmes had no matters in hand at the moment, if someone were annoyed at his prying into a case, then they should have been better to just kill him outright, and it would not have been the first attempt to do do. Plus the clues to previous, similar assaults that had gone unreported. It could have been a crime of opportunity perpetrated in the heat of the moment, and yet the entire affair felt deliberately contrived to resemble such. Too contrived. No, the manner of attack was too personal; there was a motive to it that Watson had not yet grasped. On the surface, it appeared to be a petty if brutal attack, perhaps in revenge for the loss of a bet, or because they felt cheated to learn the identity of the man they had gambled against, as if it would have affected their wagers to know who he was. Perhaps just because Holmes was Holmes and the criminal underbelly held grudges, highlighting one of the many, if better, reasons why Holmes endeavored to keep his likeness out of the papers. Hell, Holmes may have simply been rude to them, which was a natural state of existence for him, unintentional though his discourtesies often were.

On the other hand, those explanations felt wrong, at least to Watson. Mrs Hudson's words kept ringing in his ears. _What is he working on? They must have had a reason._ Holmes had been working on nothing as far as Watson could tell, and no one from the Yard had consulted him in months. Singling Holmes out for attack took foresight – finding him on a night when Watson was not with him, on a street where they'd be unlikely to be observed, herding him forward, the ambush… Holmes was known for his fighting skills, even when walking alone, and the petty criminals steered clear of him with the understanding that if they did not molest him, Holmes would take no notice of them. Common crime held no interest for Holmes because it lacked ingenuity, as crass as it sounded. Of course, all that implied was that the men who had attacked him were not common criminals at all, or at least that Fourth Man himself was not.

It was not until the next Friday morning that something finally happened. Mrs Hudson appeared at the sitting room door to tell Watson that they had a visitor who refused to come upstairs, and when Watson reluctantly went down with the intention of running him off, he found one of the Irregulars standing on the front stoop with his hat in his hand, a lad of fifteen by the name of Cartright. Watson figured he must look a fright from the way Cartright stared and then quickly looked away, but there was nothing for it; he felt a fright.

After a second's consideration, Watson stepped outside and shut the front door to save the heat. "Hullo, Mister Cartright. I'm afraid Mister Holmes has no work for you lads right now, but if you're in need of it, I could put in a word for you with a chap I know at hospital. Manual labor, but he pays well for an honest day's work, and he has some rooms to clear out."

Cartright chanced a glance at him, eyed the cigarette that Watson was trying to light against the wind, and then simply asked, "Is it true? Mister Holmes was attacked?"

Watson ceased his efforts with the match and it went out, though he stood as if still trying to light his cigarette on the wisp of smoke.

"There's been folks talkin'."

"Have there." Watson let his eyes wander until he spied two other lads sheltering in a shop doorway across the street. They were older boys like Cartright, and they made no effort to hide the fact that they were watching 221B.

"Is he okay, Doctor?"

Watson lowered the match and plucked the unlit cigarette from between his lips. "Why are you here?"

"Because we feels what we owe Mister Holmes for what he does for us." Cartright shivered in the chill breeze that kicked up at his feet and crammed his sorry, patched hat back on his head.

"He would not want you involved in this," Watson told him. "And I agree. Young man, this is not a safe business."

Cartright nodded, but ignored the sentiment. "We's been watchin' the place since we 'eard."

"There's no need for that."

"We'll keep on anyway, if it's all the same to you." Cartright looked down for a moment and then abruptly stuffed his hand in his pocket. When he brought it out, his fingers clutched a scrap of paper, which he thrust toward Watson. "'Ere. Some bloke's been tellin' tales. Braggin' like. We thought you'd best know about it."

Watson looked at the paper, and then up to find Cartright staring at him with a look so very like the one Holmes wore now that it took him a moment to react. "Mister Cartright, tell me that you have not been nosing around in this."

"Only listenin', sir." He tripped closer and shook the paper at Watson, a few inches short of actually pressing it against his chest. "We know what goes on, Doctor Watson. If it twernt for Mister Holmes, we'd all three of us be in worse straights, and we know it. He grew us up safe as we could ever hope, livin' on the streets like we haff to. Don' think we don' know what mighta happened to us without 'im."

Watson blinked softly at him and then took the paper.

"That's the man's name, sir." Cartright shrugged one shoulder at the paper, his hands already back to warm in his pockets. "'E's been at a pub in the east end called Mitch's every night this week, boastin' about 'ow 'ee stole Mister Holmes' watch right offa 'im."

Watson studied Cartright with a new sort of respect. "Mister Cartright, promise me that you won't get tangled up in this any further." Cartright merely studied him back, and Watson found himself looking at the paper again, haunted by the hint of too much knowledge in such a young boy's eyes. "You have my gratitude."

"We know, Doctor." Cartright tipped his hat the same way that Holmes would have, a jaunty if refined affair that the lad had obviously copied from his benefactor. As he turned to go, however, he stopped, half facing Watson, and then his eyes suddenly skewered Watson where he still stood on the stoop with the scrap of paper fluttering in his fingers. "Please don' tell Mister Holmes what we done. We know he wouldn' like it."

For the first time all week, Watson smiled, a genuine one. "You have my word, sir."

Cartright's mouth creased, but it came off more as a grimace than anything else, too aged an expression for one so young. "Obliged, sir. I'll be on me way."

Watson watched the boy go, the gratitude sloughing off his face like a snake shedding skin. He stepped inside only to grab his coat and hat, calling a random excuse to Mrs Hudson, and left with the scrap of paper clutched in his hand. _Josiah Redding._

_

* * *

_

It took Watson nearly an hour to make his way to the east end, and then another to realize that "Mitch's" was actually Cartright's version of _Michelle's_. The poor lad had a street accent to rival a foreigner's distortion of syllables.

The place turned out to be a seedy, disreputable little tavern, run by a great lout of a Frenchman. Watson realized too late that he had no hope of going unnoticed in his middle class finery, set adrift in a sea of grimy men who smelled like the fisheries, slaughter houses and dockyards they worked in. Holmes would have wasted no time tearing the seams of their jackets and rolling them both in muck to affect a hasty disguise, but Watson was not Holmes, and by the time it occurred to him that ruining a set of clothes was a small price to pay for revenge, he had already been seen. Watson snuck his way to a corner with as much nonchalance as humanly possible, but heads turned in his wake anyway. Compared to them, Watson was practically a blue blood, dressed like that.

He had originally intended to just ask the landlord to point Redding out to him, but the hostile atmosphere and the Frenchman's unrelenting glare convinced him to simply sit in the corner and try to blend into the wall with his ears open. He ordered a whiskey that arrived in a stained glass but told himself that the alcohol itself was enough to sterilize it as he sipped at it. The drink tasted just as cheap as it was, and it burned its way down his throat with no real flavor. He nursed it anyway and settled in to wait.

High tea and supper time had both passed under a darkening sky by the time Watson's attention lit on a likely fellow. A waif of a barmaid with a perpetual look of fear on her coal-smudged face had set about lighting candles and lamps throughout the main room; Watson took her for the Frenchman's wife and smiled when she passed him. If anything, the gentility spooked her and she rushed off without setting her taper to the sconce beside him. Watson sighed and dismissed it from his mind as he struck a match to light the thing himself. His possible query had lumbered to the bar by now, and the man leered at the barmaid as she scuttled past. Very likely then, Watson thought. The brute. It appeared that there would be no loud and obnoxious bragging tonight to betray the man by; his great ox-like head swayed as he surveyed the room, and then he scowled, apparently seeing no one he cared to bandy with. The man snatched at the drink that the Frenchman set before him, downed it in one swallow, and then tossed his coins on the counter. Watson had already dismissed the fellow as a mere boor, but he was still watching as the man puffed out his chest and pulled out a pocket watch. Much too fine a pocket watch for such a neanderthal. Watson could just make out the shape of a pierced half-sovereign dangling from the chain.

Watson grabbed his cane, his vision tunneled on the man - large and heavy-boned, so he mentally pronounced this oaf Top Man - when a pair of hands suddenly shoved him back down by his shoulders. Watson swung his cane without thinking only to have it caught and wrenched down, out of sight below the table. "Think about what you're doing, Doctor."

Watson gaped at Lestrade, half-hidden below his tipped bowler hat, his usual clothes obscured beneath a dirtied great coat that smelt as if he had dug it from a dumpster. Too stunned to reply, Watson looked instead at Josiah Redding, who had evidently decided not to leave after all; the man had a half-pint in his hand now, and as Watson watched, some other ruffian hailed him from the farthest end of the bar. Watson tensed again to move, practically insensate with the desire to drive his heel through the man's skull, but Lestrade still had hold of his cane, and Watson wasn't thinking straight enough to cross the room without it. In a furious whisper, Watson spat, "Let go of me!"

Cool as ice, Lestrade replied, "I can't do that, Doctor."

"Lestrade, that man - "

"I know. Josiah Redding."

Watson ceased struggling, unaware up until that point that he had been doing so ever since Lestrade grabbed his cane, and glared at the inspector. He would have brought his revolver if doing so had not entailed a trip to the sitting room and Holmes' scrutiny...for whatever that was worth now. As it was, he could not simply shoot the man from across the room, and he would not have shot to kill even if he could have. He wanted the man to bleed out slowly, to watch his own life pool in droughts of crimson on the floor, and his sword stick served that aim better than a revolver. Except that Lestrade had a python's grip on his cane at the moment. Since he had presented himself as a target, Watson turned on him and spat, "What are you doing here? How did you - "

"An annoying little bird told me," Lestrade quipped, his voice hushed in the din. He let go of Watson's cane now that he figured the immediate temper had been tamed. "Said you ran off like a bleedin' idiot all by yourself. He was worried you'd do something stupid, like take on some brainless oaf twice your size, alone." Lestrade gave Watson a wry, pointed look. "Can't imagine where he got that idea."

Watson fumed for a moment, then all but jabbed a finger at the man across the bar. "Why are we just sitting here? That man - "

"We are keeping watch until the rest of my men arrive," Lestrade replied, eminently reasonable where Watson could only be described as incensed. "Or rather, I am. You should go, Doctor Watson, before you get hurt."

"I won't get hurt. _He_ will get hurt, and most emphatically so. He's over there flaunting his new pocket watch. Did you notice?" Watson leaned forward over the table and nodded his head toward his quarry. "That's Top Man, Lestrade. Need I remind you of exactly what Holmes said he did? He's probably bragging about it as we speak."

Lestrade's eyebrow went up in a faint display of disgust. "No, you do not need to remind me." He turned to peer across the room with his chin resting on his hand. A moment later, Lestrade inhaled and said, "Doctor, I really think you should wait outside."

"Like hell."

"I dare say Mister Holmes would be a bit less edgy, were you out there with him."

Everything stilled for a moment, like crystal just before it shatters. "Holmes is...what, he's _here_?" Watson glanced around, nearly frantic. He half expected Holmes to traipse through the doorway dressed as a gypsy or a peg-legged cripple, or a mongoose.

"Who do you think told me where to find you?" Lestrade retorted. "And knock that off; you stand out enough as it is, all dressed like a toffer in a dive like this. He's outside with Clarkey. Hasn't even left the carriage."

Watson settled down, his nerves all aquiver. He had absolutely no desire to leave, not with _that_ man standing in his sight, his head thrown back as he bellowed over something no doubt obscene that he had just said. "How did he know where I'd gone? Even Holmes isn't that good."

"He probably got worried when you didn't come home for supper. A few of his street boys were with him when he turned up at the Yard. Perhaps they'd followed you? Reported back?"

Watson flared his nostrils. Cartright may have sold him out, or Holmes may have simply observed traces on the boys and deduced where they had recently been, and where Watson in turn might go. It heartened Watson to think of Holmes taking one glance at them and then demanding to know which east end establishment they had sent Watson to; he may have even deduced the correct street name on his own.

"Doctor." Lestrade had to tap his fingernails on the table to break Watson's murderously intent glare at Top Man's broad back. When Watson consented to glower at him instead, Lestrade said, "I am asking you, as a friend, to go outside now."

Watson glanced again at Top Man simply because he wanted the bastard's blood spattered on the floor, then furrowed his brow as Lestrade's odd expression registered. Watson tilted his head and twitched his mustache as he attempted to identify it. "Why? Holmes is alright, isn't he? You said he's in a carriage with Clarkey."

Lestrade pursed his lips in lieu of an actual response either way. "Doctor, those boys _brought_ Mister Holmes to me. Are you following?"

"No," Watson drawled, drawing the syllable out longer than necessary simply to convey his lack of patience. Holmes wasn't injured, was he? He couldn't possibly have gotten himself hurt in the few hours that Watson had been gone, not considering his recent, overly cautious avoidance of any and all people not strictly necessary to inhabiting their flat. Darkness had long since fallen, though, and Holmes was out there in it, without Watson standing behind him to guard his back.

Lestrade looked as if he wanted to knock Watson's head about to see if there were any sense in it. "He was extremely upset, Doctor Watson."

A tiny thread of guilt slithered through Watson's intestines, and he threw a worried glance at the tavern door. "How upset?"

Lestrade pressed his lips together, thinning them out, and regarded his fingers where they overlapped on the table. "This is Mister Holmes I'm talking about, Doctor. When I say _upset_, that's exactly what I mean."

Watson chewed on his lip for a moment, his head turned toward Lestrade but his eyes lingering on the other side of the room. "It is rather dark out, isn't it?"

"So he remarked when he showed up in my office."

Watson shut his eyes for a moment and exhaled through his nose in a frustrated huff. "Damn."

A whisper of clothing implied that Lestrade had nodded with a similar sentiment. "I didn't realize how bad he..._it_ was."

"I know," Watson murmured. He glanced up at Lestrade from under twitchy brows. "Did anyone else..."

Thankfully, Lestrade caught the unspoken question and shook his head to save Watson the need to finish his sentence. "No one else noticed; Clarkey and I kept him near the whole time, and considering his usual insanity, he behaved himself remarkably well."

Watson let himself blink loosely at the table. "My gratitude. How _did _you find me?"

"The tall lad – Carter?"

"Cartright," Watson supplied. His eyes inevitably wandered back to the man who was insidiously ruining his life by taking away the one real comfort left to him.

"Yes, that's the one." Lestrade laced his fingers together on the tabletop and then took to avid contemplation of his knuckles. "Cartright told me that a few of the lads heard that something happened. They've been watching your house."

Watson flared his nostrils; he already knew this. His eyes tracked back to Top Man and fixed there, on the watch chain he could still see pulled taught over the man's large though firm abdomen. "I am aware of that already, Inspector. I've spoken to Mister Cartright myself."

"Doctor, I don't think you understand." Lestrade stood up and planted himself squarely in the chair across from Watson, effectively blocking his view of Top Man, or at least requiring Watson to pay attention to Lestrade as a side effect of having to glare past his ear to keep visually skewering his quarry. "That boy told me that Mister Holmes spent two hours wandering around to your favorite shops and restaurants looking for you."

Watson bit his lip, an expression that he knew his mustache would hide, and fingered the wood grain beneath his palm. There had to be some mistake; Sherlock Holmes did not _wander_ anywhere. He stalked his own teacup when it disappeared on him. "All the more reason for me to put a decisive end to this." He gestured pointedly at Top Man. "I am not leaving this rotting establishment until that is done."

"Look here, Doctor." Lestrade leaned forward to lend an illusion of confidentiality to their conversation. "Those boys say they only brought him to the Yard because they thought you'd be there – that Cartright lad thought it's where you'd gone from the start. Apparently, he only got Mister Holmes to go with him by telling him that they would take him to you. And then you weren't there, and the boys had to tell us where you _had_ gone – "

"Do you have any brothers, Geoffrey?"

Lestrade started at the use of his first name. Watson probably should not have taken such a liberty, but he couldn't find it within himself to regret it, since it had finally cut through the copper and hit the man underneath. "Um…no," Lestrade replied. He eyed Watson for a moment and then slanted his gaze off across the room to where Top Man stood over a table of cronies, gesticulating as he blathered on. "I have a sister, though." Lestrade sucked on his teeth and then admitted to the table top, "It's not the same, I know."

Watson flared his nostrils and then had to make a concerted effort not to fall into a moment of melancholy; he did not have that luxury. "I _did_ have a brother." He emphasized the past tense. "He was a lot like Holmes, actually. Drank himself into an early grave."

Lestrade spared a moment to inhale, his eyes flickering briefly to meet Watson's. Finally, with a long sigh, he remarked, "There's a reason he did not want you involved in this part of it."

"I know," Watson agreed. "It hasn't hit him yet. I think he's still numb to it at the moment."

"I think you are too," Lestrade interjected.

"No doubt." Watson paused for effect as much as to gather the strength to keep saying these things aloud. "He's going to turn to the needle eventually. I need…" Watson glanced up to find Top Man again, and the fury he still felt mingled in with the terror of knowing what would soon come. Almost too quietly to carry to Lestrade, Watson finished, "I'm going to lose him, at least for a little while if not altogether. I need to do something before that happens, because if I don't, I'll go mad. I'm _already_ going mad, just from the knowing of it. Can you understand that?"

Lestrade's answer probably would have come on the heels of the unyielding if sympathetic sigh that he offered initially as if to soften the blow, but as he opened his mouth to speak, caught in profile in a sliver of Watson's periphery, he stiffened. "Oh, hell."

The muffled curse drew Watson's attention, and then he straightened as well. Holmes stood framed in the pub doorway with Clarkey right behind him. A formless sort of fear coiled up in Watson's innards as he watched Holmes scan the dim bar room. It wasn't Holmes' reaction that gave away the moment of recognition when his eyes encountered Top Man. In fact, it was the studious and complete _lack_ of reaction that betrayed it. Holmes' gaze fixed on the man and his expression went blank for a bare handful of obvious seconds before he made a point of not looking anymore, as if he could avoid being noticed by not noticing in turn. Ignoring the hand that Clarkey attempted to stall him with, Holmes threaded his way through the room, his attention squarely fixed on Watson even though his gaze merely darted glancing blows across and around the table where Watson sat looking guilty, a mirror image of Lestrade's own half-obscured expression.

Holmes pulled up a vacant chair from a nearby table and plopped down into, just near enough to Watson for the proximity to be noticeably too close. "I asked Mrs Hudson to prepare a cold supper since you missed the evening meal. She'll have it prepared in time for our return."

Watson blinked at Holmes a few times – he hadn't heard Holmes' normal, arrogantly strident voice in days, and now to have him say something so jarringly banal in a faint rasp that testified to the long disuse of his vocal chords… In lieu of a response, Watson wrapped his hands around his whiskey glass to quell the urge to fidget. Clarkey had found a chair of his own by then, but the four of them could hardly pretend at being inconspicuous now; Clarkey, bless him, looked nice and crisp in his uniform, and the spectacle of a constable entering an establishment like this had already sent a few skulking, unsavory types out the door. Top Man was not one of them; he seemed perfectly at ease across the room, lounging about with his simpering little depraved admirers like a black king holding court in the corner of a chess board.

Lestrade grumbled under his breath, pinching the bridge of his nose in the process, and then he blew out a resigned breath. "Are the men in place, Constable?"

"Not yet, sir," Clarkey replied quietly. He lowered his tone further to admit, "They haven't actually arrived yet."

Next to Watson, Holmes shifted uneasily and threw a hooded glance around the room."Watson, what on earth are you doing here? This place is ill fit to be called a public house - it's filthy." He caught sight of a few dice games in a dim corner, and then a handful of men gambling at cards. "Much more my sort of establishment than yours." His forehead bunched up and then he peered quizzically at Watson. "You did not get hold of your checkbook, did you? I was not aware that you had added lock picking to your repertoire."

Drolly, Watson replied, "Well, one of us should be proficient at it. And since you still aren't..."

Holmes gave him a blank look and then grinned unexpectedly. In a smooth and understated movement, he swiped Watson's whiskey glass away and downed the remainder of it, which amounted to barely one swallow. It took him a second to grimace, his eyes filming over at the unpleasant burn of the stuff, and then he gave the glass a dirty look. "This is ghastly." The glass clanked loudly as he set it down. "Right, then. If you are not busy gambling away your meager fortune, then I suggest we find a more pleasant location to pass the evening. As I said, Mrs Hudson is waiting for us." His eyes flickered across the common room again, and Watson's followed when he noticed Holmes stiffen.

Top Man and his cronies had quieted, but for the worst possible reason. Watson could see the moment when Top Man recognized Holmes. A second after that, his eyes narrowed at Clarkey, the only recognizable law officer among them. They must have looked quite the spectacle – a law man, a bum in a smelly overcoat, a scruffy gentleman wearing a foppish wide-brimmed hat, and Watson himself looking far too fine in his quality wool suit.

"We have a problem," Watson announced. Top Man had evidently decided against trying to escape, because he was headed for their table.

Holmes tugged at his shirt cuffs, which gaped around his wrists in the absence of cuff links, and leaned toward Watson. "We should go now. You know how Mrs Hudson disapproves of late meals. She does have to clean up the kitchen afterward, you know."

Lestrade inhaled sharply, sparing zero attention for Holmes' commentary on the proper treatment of a landlady, which under other circumstances would have been amusing. "Nervy bugger."

A peculiar hush settled over the pub – that type of hush that people took on when they were only pretending to mind their own business. It was ridiculous, how quickly the situation spun out of hand. One moment, all four of them were sitting there, dumbfounded at the gall of the man approaching them, and then everything changed. The next thing Watson knew, he was on his feet with no recollection of drawing the blade from his cane, Lestrade's fingers clamped on his shoulder to warn him off of doing anything rash. Clarkey had shot from his chair as well, but before he could do anything, Holmes finally made a move of his own.

It took Watson an extra moment that he could ill afford to realize that Holmes wasn't about to go on the attack, as Watson expected. Instead, Holmes craned his neck around to better peer up at the towering bulk of the man bearing down on them, and calmly greeted, "Hello, Thomas."

The brute returned, "Aye, William." And then he dragged a chair over to straddle backwards. "Me and the boys was just wonderin' what yer doin' over 'ere with these sorry louts."

Watson blinked, aware of Clarkey's uncertain though still tense stance on the other side of the table. 'William' was the name that Holmes boxed under. Now that circumstances demanded extra attention to detail, Watson looked at the watch chain that this Thomas bloke was wearing. Up close, it was obviously not Holmes' watch, though it was still too rich a bauble for the sort of man wearing it. And what Watson had earlier taken for a pierced half sovereign decorating the chain was now revealed to be nothing more than an old foreign coin, probably Asian in origin. This was not Top Man.

Holmes offered Thomas a twitchy smile, an expression quite out of place on Holmes' face for its uncertainty, and then he directed his eyes back to the edge of the table, where his hands rested. Only then did he notice Watson standing there with his blade half drawn. He frowned at Watson's white-knuckled grip on either part of the sword stick, and then he slanted his eyes up to catch Lestrade sheepishly reclaiming his seat, followed a second later by Clarkey. In that tone of eminent reason that never failed to grate Watson's nerves – the one that intimated that everyone except Holmes himself had lost their wits in an abrupt and inexplicable fashion – Holmes asked, "What the devil is the matter with all of you?"

Watson scowled in annoyance and slid his blade back home as he threw himself back down into his seat. Holmes' behavior upon entering the pub – that had been recognition, yes, but not of a sinister kind; he had probably simply wondered if he could manage to avoid being noticed and roped into an unwanted conversation as his alter ego, the champion underworld boxer William Scott. "Nothing, old cock. Pay no mind to us lesser mortals."

Holmes gave Watson an odd look and then dismissed him with a prim sniff in favor of searching his pockets. His frown turned more concerted as he apparently failed to find what he was looking for, and then he deflated where he sat, staring blankly across the table in the general vicinity of Lestrade's right shoulder. "Watson, I seem to have misplaced my cigarette case."

Watson actually felt himself grow cold at that. Simply because he could think of no other acceptable reaction, Watson silently fished out his own cigarette case and slid it across the table until it nudged the blade of Holmes' palm. Fingers closed over it with barely a glance at the object now enclosed in their grasp, and Watson relinquished it to Holmes' single-minded inspection.

"Ah," Thomas grunted. He crossed his arms over the impressive bulk of his chest and nodded a confirmation to himself. "I see. You're here as Mister Holmes, then."

Holmes flicked an eyebrow up but he seemed far too absorbed in examining Watson's cigarettes to make any additional reaction.

Watson took over for him, which he was well used to doing when Holmes completely distracted himself during an investigation. Having it happen now, while the only thing occupying Holmes' great mind was the choosing of a cigarette, left him disconcerted. "Um…yes, Mister…Thomas."

"Tha's a right shame," Thomas sighed. "Ol' William 'ere's the only boxer what makes a challenge for me, you know. I was lookin' forward to a round."

At great length, Holmes finally selected one of the cigarettes – what difference he had seen between them all, Watson would never know – and snapped the case shut.

Thomas eyed Holmes expectantly, and then he turned pensive when Holmes appeared, for all intents and purposes, not to have heard him at all. He glanced at Watson, and then eyed Clarkey, who stood out like a sore thumb. "Whudder you boys lookin' for in 'ere, anyway? You after some bloke?"

Holmes' gaze skittered around the table and then he snatched the oil lamp to light his cigarette by. Around the puffing, he said, "Watson, we really must be going. I can see from your complexion and the state of your attire that you have not eaten since lunch. You know how cranky you become when you miss your scheduled meals."

The eerie air of utter nonchalance actually raised hairs on the back of Watson's neck. "I…Holmes, do mind your sleeve. You're going to set yourself on fire."

Holmes' eyes flicked to the flame of the oil lamp and then he set it down in favor of plucking the cigarette from between his lips. From his behavior, his whole world could have narrowed to that one object, and never mind that there was anything going on outside of it.

Most other men probably would have been insulted by Holmes' propensity for ignoring a direct address. Thomas, though, merely appeared concerned as Holmes took a long drag and then studied the lazy flickers of smoke that his exhale produced. "Right," Thomas grunted. "Should I be goin' then?"

"No," Watson assured him. He raised a hand to motion Thomas to remain, unnecessary as it was since the man had made no move to rise. "Would you happen to know a man called Josiah Redding? We understand that he frequents this establishment."

Thomas grimaced as if his own tongue had taken on a foul taste. "What you want with that bugger?"

Watson straightened. "You do know him, then."

"Wish I didn't," Thomas grunted. "Man's a bloody useless braggard, and a dipper to boot."

Watson figured that he had run "braggart" and "blackguard" together, not that the technicality mattered; Thomas had clearly meant the term as an insult.

Holmes lowered his brows and managed somehow to peer down his nose at Watson despite the disparity in their heights. "Who is Josiah Redding?"

"Never mind, Holmes." Watson directed his conversation to Thomas. "Do you know where we can find him?"

Holmes scowled. "At my last reckoning, we had not taken on any cases."

Watson sucked his lips in against his teeth and then elected to ignore Holmes. "Sir?"

"Why?" Thomas demanded. "What's he done now?" He looked to Holmes yet again, but suspiciously this time. "What the hell's goin' on, Mister Holmes? What's this about, huh?"

It was Lestrade who answered, shrugging his way from his borrowed coat as he did, probably because the pungent beggar type that he appeared to be – poorly appeared, at that – would garner no respect. "I'm afraid that's a matter for the Yard, sir. Do you know where he is?"

Thomas squinted at each of them in turn, but his eyes rested on the side of Holmes' averted face when he replied, "No, sir, I sure don't. But I can ask around if you like."

Lestrade started to answer, "That won't be necessary," but Watson cut him off.

"I would most grateful for any information you could gather." Watson fumbled in his pockets for a card and a half crown, and slid both across the table to Thomas. "A telegram can reach me here, any time of day or night."

Holmes glanced at the items that Watson left on the table in front of Thomas, and then glared at Watson. "I asked you to stay out of this."

"I never agreed to your terms, Holmes."

Thomas made a point of studying their interaction, and then he slipped Watson's card out from under the half crown, leaving the coin itself behind as he lumbered to his feet. "Right, then." He appeared wary of a sudden, and Watson wondered exactly what he had noticed to make him act as such. "I'll be discrete, don't you be worryin'. Got me a reputation, you know." Thomas glanced again at the two Yarders and then tucked his chin as he scrutinized Watson with a pale shadow of Holmes' more practiced mannerisms. "That Redding bastard's got a rep too, if you catch my drift, sir."

Watson nodded and wondered if he had gone pale. Thomas knew. He _knew_. "There is also a man with a tattoo here." Watson indicated the spot on his own shoulder, which he knew of both from a few of Holmes' passing comments, and from the notes that Clarkey had allowed him to see. "An anchor surrounded by a sickle and stars."

Thomas' frown deepened and he turned his head a fraction to one side, so that Watson now resided in his periphery. "Aye. Should be obvious enough, that."

Holmes flared his nostrils, expressing displeasure at nothing in particular as he held his cigarette in front of his face, and then he mumbled, "There is only one star."

Watson swallowed. "Yes, one star." Nearly inaudible, Watson murmured, "Apologies, old fellow."

"I am not discussing this with you, Doctor."

"Right, then," Thomas said again, though far more softly this time. He hesitated as if he wanted to say something more, but he ended up simply puckering his brow as he brooded down at the top of Holmes' head. Then he walked away without another word, boots clomping too forcefully across the stone floor. A gaggle of his cronies tried to set upon him, but Thomas made a series of rude gestures and disappeared out a side door.

Lestrade waited for the hubbub to die back down a measure, and then he rounded on Watson to hiss, "Outside. Now. The both of you."

Once they had all adjourned to the sidewalk outside, the night air damp and turning chill, Lestrade flung his odious overcoat into a gutter and jabbed a finger at Watson. "You are interfering in a police investigation."

"Nonsense," Watson replied airily. He adopted Holmes' own diversionary tactic by explaining, "Our investigations are merely running parallel, Inspector."

"Bollux! You – "

"You did not actually expect such a poor attempt at concealment to work, did you?"

Lestrade stopped in mid tirade to glare at Holmes, but for once, he did not bother to argue his official qualifications at detective work versus Holmes' amateur, if often more effective, tactics. "No, Mister Holmes," he ground out. "I most certainly did not. But I couldn't very well go traipsing into a place like that looking like myself, now could I?"

"Watson did." As if Watson could not possibly do wrong, which was a fiction since Holmes often took a perverse sort of glee in listing out Watson's mistakes to him, from blunders of logic to grammatical errors. Holmes blinked down at the discarded disguise, then shrugged. "Traipsing in smelling like an unwashed tramp was hardly any better. You drew far too much attention to yourself simply by virtue of the stench of that thing."

Lestrade pressed his tongue to the inside of his cheek and let his gaze wander skyward as he reigned in that special brand of annoyance that Holmes could engender in people so easily. Then he flung a hand at Clarkey. "Tell the boys to go home; there's nothing for them to do here."

Clarkey scuttled off to see to the dispersement of any officers who had arrived by then. Once he was gone, Holmes gave a dramatic sigh and turned to Watson. "I find myself quite enervated by this detour of events. Shall we retire back to our rooms?"

"Holmes…" Watson glanced pointedly at Lestrade, who rolled his eyes but consented to retreat out of earshot. Watson turned back to Holmes and asked, "Are you alright?"

Holmes started. "Of course I'm alright. Why on earth would you think otherwise?"

"Well…" Watson started to shake his head, then decided against it. "You haven't really spoken to me in days, for one. For another, your behavior in the pub was…bizarre, even for you."

"I have been dragged to this infernal dump quite nearly in the middle of the night, after missing supper, and you inquire as to why I may be slightly out of sorts?"

"Missing meals has never unsorted you, Holmes." Watson found himself picking at his own knuckles and frowned down at them. "I realize that my leaving in such an abrupt fashion must have worried you. I apologize for it."

Holmes scoffed. "You are hardly contrite, Watson."

More sharply now, for he was convinced that at least part of Holmes denseness was an affectation, Watson clarified, "I did not say I was sorry for coming here, or for sticking my nose into this business; only for worrying you and causing you to be here at this uncivil hour with me." He paused. "Though I am glad to see you out. Your silence has troubled me deeply."

"Watson, you know very well that I am apt to languish for days on end in exactly that manner. I believe you colloquially refer to such episodes in your scribblings as my 'black fits.'"

Watson nodded, but his eyebrows went up in contradiction of agreement. "You have not been suffering a black fit, Holmes. You have been drifting about our rooms like a ghost, smiling and carrying on as if nothing were amiss, except for refusing to speak and flinching from my hands. And you have not so much as picked up your violin in over a week. I have been afraid for you. I cannot even begin to imagine what thoughts have been going round in your head, and after our last conversation on this matter, I can only think that you have been distorting facts again…" Watson heaved a sigh and looked up to find Holmes feigning disinterest. Feigning it poorly, for even though Holmes made a point of examining the scene over Watson's shoulder, the movements of his eyes were random and unfocused. "I am terrified to think of the toll this is taking on you."

"Do not be ridiculous," Holmes snapped. "I have been attacked before, and suffered far worse injuries than this. I don't see what all of the fuss is about, anyway. You have never reacted like this before."

"Holmes, you… I was there, if you recall. When you came home that night? Do not try to tell me that this was simply some common assault on your person; I know better."

Grudgingly, Holmes admitted, "I was taken aback, obviously. I have no personal experience of that sort of crime. But in point of fact, it was not the most brutal attack I have been subjected to."

"It _is_ the most appalling."

"Oh, do be still; it was no such thing. I have thought about it, and concluded that my initial reaction was simply due to the shock of the unexpected and unusually intrusive nature of the attack. There is no further cause for concern, Watson. As you can see, I am healing up quite nicely. There is no lasting harm done."

Watson fought valiantly not to react to that pronouncement, not in any way, though his mind unhelpfully produced a vivid recall of the sound of Holmes voice as he thrashed on the sitting room floor. Holmes could be unbelievably stubborn once he had decided on an idea, no matter how absurd. And this assertion of his, that having been set upon in that alley were an incident hardly worth mentioning, was an obvious if flimsy defensive tactic – Watson could see that. Desperation was not a state that Holmes succumbed to naturally; it only ever filtered into his actions over matters of a personal type – matters concerning Watson, being the most notable. Watson still was not entirely certain that Holmes had not opted to fake his death at least in part to escape the constant reminder of having lost his dearest and only friend to a woman's arms. And disappearing for three years like that made no _logical_ sense at all, considering that Moran had known all along that Holmes was very much alive. It did make a sort of immature and twisted _emotional_ sense, however, which was entirely in keeping with Holmes' lacking attributes in that department. Watson had never bought the stories that Holmes had tried to sell him about Tibet and traveling and adventure. That bookseller that Holmes had been impersonating…Watson had seen him at his store on the corner more than often enough to know that Holmes had been in London for at least a year before revealing himself to Watson. But the Great Hiatus was not something that they spoke about, probably for fear of what may be said on both sides.

In any case, Holmes only displayed acts of desperation when he did not know, emotionally, how to handle something. Feelings were not something that Holmes dealt well with, seeing as how he had subsumed so many of his own over the years, sometimes in total denial of their existence. He built battlements around himself out of logic and reason, and he rationalized things that could not, by definition, be rational. To Holmes, however, everything _should_ be rational, and so he tried to force abstract ideas and feelings into constraints that were not made for them. When that approach failed, when something struck past his carefully constructed fortifications, Holmes reverted to often senseless actions, a sort of ritualistic series of activities meant to banish the feelings, or else to render them obsolete through some show of normalcy. If he did not acknowledge them for long enough, then they meant nothing, and so were not real.

Watson assumed that this was the stage at which Holmes had found himself that afternoon. Numbness had worn off, and rather than face what was left beneath it, Holmes had decided to act as normal as he was capable of, as if acting so could render it true. But his façade was quite grievously cracked, and even Lestrade could see it. Hell, even Thomas, who only knew Holmes as a fellow boxer, could tell that nothing was right with him at the moment. This step in the process was always short lived. Next, Watson knew, came the black mood and the chemical remedies, which were merely another form of evasion. Holmes was the sort of person who should never be cursed to sit alone with his own thoughts.

Even if Watson had wanted to say something, it was too late; Holmes was already walking away, one hand thrust casually in his pocket while he rolled the lit cigarette between the fingers of his other. If it weren't for the tension in the careful set of Holmes' shoulders, in the too-practiced nonchalance of his stroll, Watson could have believed that Holmes was, indeed, perfectly fine. He might even have been tempted to envy the ease with which logic could render such a heinous crime irrelevant. But he knew Holmes far too well to be tricked into thinking such a thing.

"Holmes." Watson chased him down the sidewalk. "At least give me back my cigarette case, will you? I could use a smoke of my own after having wasted the entire evening drinking truly abysmal whiskey and making a fool of myself."

Holmes stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and peered back at Watson, his face in profile as he strained his eyes to see over his own shoulder. He looked almost…stricken.

Watson stopped as well, just outside of arm's reach. "What?"

"Watson, you are many things, but foolish is not one of them. Pray, do not to call yourself such; it is most disagreeable to me."

Of its own accord, Watson's head tipped faintly to one side, like a dog assaulted by a peculiar scent that had wafted only for a bare second on a tendril of lonesome wind. He might have thanked Holmes for the solemn delivery of that compliment, but that was not their way. Instead, Watson cleared his throat and blinked before repeating, "My cigarette case."

"Oh." Holmes seemed to twitch himself back to the present, and then he patted himself down, which ended in a frown. "Oh. My apologies, dear fellow. I must have left it on the table." He offered Watson a wide smile – too wide, and sickly around the edges – and patted Watson's good shoulder as he strode past him. "I won't be but a moment, Mother Hen, and then we can be off home to fill your grumbling belly with Mrs Hudson's admirable repast."

Watson nodded and grimaced to himself as he watched Holmes disappear back into the pub, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of what were clearly a pair of Watson's trousers – they were too long and bunched around the ankles, plus just a bit too wide in the waist, which explained the way Holmes' belt cinched and pleated the fabric where it hung loose around his hips. His waistcoat appeared to be his own, for it fit snugly across his abdomen, as was his long black frock coat, but the white linen shirt beneath them both could only have been Watson's as well, for the sleeves were too long and would no doubt bear cigarette burns by the time Watson pilfered it back into his own possession, _if _he ever managed to pilfer it back.

After Holmes passed out of sight, Watson allowed himself a moment to shut his eyes in the hopes of collecting himself. He honestly did not know how to fix any of this. He could have his revenge, yes, but for what? Holmes would still be ineffably broken in that sad and ill-definable manner. He would still have that wide-eyed look upon his face, no matter what he did to hide it – that secretly hollow, cast-off expression that some of his Irregulars wore like seconds skins. The _knowing _look that lent a reddish cast like burnt mahogany to the brown irises of his eyes, as if the sun were shining behind dark brown crepe paper. The one that Watson suspected would tear _him_ to ribbons eventually and leave him shredded as well, just from seeing it every day on his friend's face.

The scuffle of boots reached Watson's ears and he forced his eyes open, straightening his back and planting his cane firm at his side to bear that fraction of his weight that his own leg protested. His limp had worsened with age and he could not help but equate it with the burdens he had chosen to bear, as if they increased his body mass in a very tangible way, which they might indeed have done; he could not be certain that it was merely a fancy to imagine it so. Watson looked up as Holmes exited the pub, the cigarette case catching the glint of street lamps from between the thin fingers that clutched it. Holmes nearly collided with another man on the sidewalk who was headed into the pub at the same moment. At the last instant, Holmes noticed the man and tried to twist out of the way, but his shoulder bumped into the other man's arm, a glancing blow. Watson quite clearly heard Holmes' polite apology – "Do excuse me, sir" – and the larger man's snarl – "Why don't you watch where you're going, bloody swell" – and then time seemed to freeze in spite of the continuance of events.

Holmes had paused in the act of turning away, facing in the opposite direction from Watson with one ear cocked toward the brute he had grazed. Watson saw him glance up, his lips parted slightly and his expression naked as he sized up the man in the pub doorway. A second or dragged by and then Holmes huffed something under his breath as he stumbled backwards, his gaze searching for something along the sidewalk in Watson's direction. As Holmes shuffled away from the pub, he must have made some peculiar sound, because the brute glanced back for a closer look at him, and immediately perked up. "Oi. Sweet little poppet, is it?"

The voice stopped Holmes dead in his tracks, his back to the pub and the threat within its doorway. It was dark, the sky like pitch beyond the glow of gas lamps and lighted tenement windows that lined the opposite side of the dirty street, but Watson could still see him blanch.

"Inspector." Watson hefted his cane in the surest grip he had ever mustered. "_Lestrade_!"

Lestrade turned at the calling of his name as Watson stalked past him, making for Holmes. "Doctor?"

Redding. _Top Man_. He did not advance on Holmes, but even in stillness, he looked a crouched predator looming in the oily street. Holmes stumbled back a step and ran into Watson. A startled sound escaped him, not quite a gasp but close, and he flailed at the unexpected presence of a person where, a moment ago, there had been none. Watson merely grabbed Holmes by the collar in spite of the instinctive shielding of his arms and shoved Holmes behind himself. Safe. Out of the way.

Top Man's attention shifted to Watson, eyes darting briefly to the stick in his raised hand, and then he narrowed his eyes. "Right," Top Man growled. "Look here, Guv. I don't mean any trouble, see?" The flash of wary hostility in his eyes betrayed otherwise; this man relished the thought of violence.

"Watson." Holmes latched a hand onto Watson's sleeve, just above the elbow, stilling his arm. It was the only thing that prevented Watson from clubbing the foul man then and there. "Mrs Hudson has supper laid out. We would do best not to keep her waiting."

"Yes," Top Man purred. "You'd best run along home, poppet. Who knows what might happen to a pretty thing in a place like this?"

Holmes flinched, minute but there. As Holmes ruffled his shoulders in the act of shaking off his lapse of feigned normality, Watson shrugged Holmes' hands away. There in front of him – there was the telltale watch chain, not pawned for money but kept as a trophy, dangling from the man's grimy waistcoat pocket. Watson steeled his glare and felt his lip curl up under his mustache as he snarled, "My friend would like his watch back, _sir_." He meant the title as an insult, and Top Man clearly took it as such.

"Watson – " Holmes pawed at his sleeve again.

Watson wrenched himself free again and took a step nearer the odious man in front of him. Literally, at that – the man reeked of the sewer, just as Holmes had that night in the sitting room with the scent of this – this _fiend_ still etched into his skin. "You repulsive _devil_," Watson spit out.

Top Man's face darkened, turning grotesque before Watson's eyes. "You watch who you be calling names there, sir. I don't take kindly to threats." His lips turned up faintly, perhaps a snarl or perhaps something worse, and looked at Holmes. "But the little poppet here already knows that, don't he? Eh, poppet?"

If he weren't already incensed enough to strike, hearing Holmes swallow a noise of some sort – not a whimper, decidedly not – behind him would have tipped him over the edge. Top Man towered a full head over Watson, but it hardly mattered to him. "Give it back!"

"Watson, it is hardly of any import." Holmes grabbed his sleeve yet again, and added his other hand to the mix this time, grasping Watson's wrist just above the brutal grip he had on his stick. "Here. Your case." He wheedled the cigarette case into Watson's breast pocket and then tugged at him. "Come, now."

Watson twisted his right arm away from the flimsy restraint offered by Holmes' shaking hands and paused in his fury only long enough to turn and shove Holmes back as hard as he could. He heard Holmes trip against someone else, who presumably caught and righted him since Watson did not hear a body sprawl all over the pavement. Then Lestrade came up next to him asking, "Mister Josiah Redding?"

Watson reigned in his temper with a valiant effort. He could not go in for murder, he reminded himself; Holmes would never forgive him that.

Top Man snorted. "What of it?"

Lestrade puffed up and brandished a pair of darbies; from the looks of it, he was only barely in control of his temper himself. The disgust probably tempered it, oddly enough; Watson could see it where it snarled up Lestrade's left cheek. "You, sir, are under arrest for assault and robbery. I advise you to come quietly."

Redding balked. "Who did I rob and assault then, eh?"

"Him!" Watson snapped, stabbing a finger awkwardly but forcefully to where he assumed Holmes stood behind him; he hit his mark, because he could both feel and hear a whoosh of air that signified Holmes jerking aside to avoid being jabbed. "And don't you dare deny it, you wretched _cur_! You have his watch - I can recognize it from here!"

Lestrade tried to calm him with an ineffectual hand to Watson's forearm. "Doctor, you should leave this to us."

Watson fumed, but since Clarkey had appeared with a handful of proper officers, he grudgingly shuffled out of the way, shoulders hunched with the tension coursing through him in search of an outlet. Holmes immediately latched onto his jacket sleeve, though not with much force, and tried to pull him even farther away. Watson merely set his feet and refused to be dragged from that spot.

Top Man, however, let loose a grin the likes of which could have frozen the blood in the veins of a man whose body boiled even a single degree less than Watson's own. "What, Mister Holmes over there? That wasn't assault." He looked at Lestrade. "Inspector, is it?"

Lestrade grit his teeth. "Inspector Geoffrey Lestrade of Scotland Yard. I would advise you not to say anything more, sir. If you do, it will be entered into evidence against you."

"You can enter whatever you like," Redding purred. "We didn't have us an 'assault,' Inspector Geoffrey Lestrade. What we had us was a gentleman's agreement. Mister Holmes told us to go ahead, all nice and quiet like. Seems he's some sort of indorser. Shameful, really. Needed a fix real bad."

"You – " Watson spluttered himself incoherent, and then rounded on Lestrade, who appeared just as sickened by that intimation as Watson felt. "Inspector, surely we do not have to listen to this – this reprehensible twaddle!"

"Certainly not," Lestrade spit out. "Mister Redding, your hands, sir." He brandished the darbies, which cued the other officers to draw closer in preparation for a scuffle.

"But surely," Redding crooned, "you don't think I would _ever_ want to harm a hair on his pretty little head? No, no, no. It would be such a shame, marring that soft skin of his. Like spoiling a fresh pot of cream."

Watson gaped, speechless and repulsed to the point that he could actually feel the whiskey he had drunk earlier trying to crawl a burning trail back up his esophagus. He could sense the utter silence behind him where Holmes stood, like a presence pricking needles into the soft spaces between his vertebrae. The quiet amplified when Holmes calmly let go of Watson's jacket and backed up a step. Gentlemanly distance - the proper position for a mere friend to take in polite society, so as to avoid suspicion of deviances such as inversion. Watson ducked his head, well aware of how feral he could make himself look, and stepped right back into the sphere of personal space that Holmes had vacated.

"Why don't you tell them there, poppet," Redding goaded. He appeared manic. Hungry after his own words. "Tell these gentleman how you begged us for it. Tell them how their good little Detective Sherlock Holmes went crawling on the ground to get it, hands and knees in the street like a dirty little slut. Tell them how it got you off, why don't you."

The entire horrid moment seemed to crawl past in wretched stillness, etched frozen into whatever fabric wove beneath the visible reality of that dark street. Revulsion, disbelief, nausea all held at bay in the grip of the shock that rendered everyone save Redding mute. It struck Watson suddenly that Redding wasn't trying to justify his actions by making it sound consensual, but rather squeezing every last ounce of mortification from his erstwhile prey that he could get. To embarrass Holmes in front of every man present – to emasculate him before his peers and render him...not comical, but certainly grotesque in a sort of dark mockery of mirth. Ridiculous. Laughable. Common...disgusting.

"Lestrade," Watson hissed. "Shut him up this instant or I will not be held accountable for myself."

"You aint' got no shame, have you, precious?" Redding stepped closer to Lestrade, but only because it also brought him closer to Holmes, blocked as he was. Lestrade, for his part, seemed unable to gain control over himself enough to do anything other than gape. The assault was a psychological one, and from the scuff behind him, Watson imagined that it worked and that Holmes had shied. "Wanted it bad, I could tell."

A small sound drew Watson's gaze over his shoulder. For a split second, he met Holmes' wide eyes, and then Holmes violently shook his head before stuttering a panicked gaze about to graze the other men who were present, his features gone dangerously pale in the darkness. Watson felt his own eyes spark like flint as he fixed his eyes back on Top Man, wishing that they were alone so that he could skewer the man without witnesses.

"Street was all filthy, and there he was, down on the ground waiting for it. Quivered and moaned like a good little whore, didn't you?"

Holmes' reply came as barely a breath on the evening air, but the tone in which he whispered it carried clear as bells, just a painfully soft and gentle statement of fact; there wasn't even any recrimination to it, as if he were simply correcting a delicate error. "No. You held me down."

To Lestrade, Top Man declared, "He's right modest, isn't he? Why, the pretty thing was practically begging for it, he wanted it so bad."

Scratch that - Watson would have preferred an abandoned building where he could take his time killing the man. He heard Holmes mumble a tremulous negation that included one syllable but no actual word, and Watson's own skin heated with fury and mortification both.

"Tell them, poppet – tell them what a fine ride it was, eh?"

Watson glanced back again, but Holmes was busy searching faces for hints of...blame, probably. And he was calm about it, for all his eyes waxed too wide and his hands were balled in his pockets to hide their shaking. Watson could perceive it, however, in the tense lines of his forearms, the muscles of which Holmes had tightened to try to suppress the trembling.

"Like breakin' in a prize young colt. Bet they don't know how that pretty white skin of yours turns pink. Or how you squirm when a man touches you. Remember that?"

Holmes clenched his jaw, a muted recollection of terror and desperate shame written in equal measures upon his face as he backed up a step and avoided looking at anyone now. "I didn't squirm," he whispered. "I didn't."

Watson gripped Holmes by one shoulder to arrest any further argument that Holmes may have made to Top Man's incendiary statements. Sotto voce, Watson breathed, "You do not have to defend yourself to the likes of him."

"Made you shiver, didn't I, precious?" Top Man persisted in his perverse taunting, performing for all present. The continued taunting drew Holmes' eyes, his very gaze pale as if he were resigned to hearing such perversions applied to his person. As if he knew he deserved to have such things said of him. "Trembled and moaned like a cheap whore when I took you."

Holmes dropped his gaze to swallow and then scanned the crescent of Yard men again. He was looking for evidence - for tells that they believed this filth and would turn on him. For signs that they found him repulsive or weak...anything other than what he had striven to portray himself as for decades now...that they pitied him rather than respected him now - the poor, helpless little victim. Watson took his other shoulder as well and tried to turn him away from the scene.

"If only they could've heard it. Remember how hard it made you? I do." Top Man raised his fingers to his nose and inhaled as if the aroma itself were bliss. "I remember how good you smelled...decadent. And the way you asked for it... Such a pretty little thing with a cock in your mouth. Shut you up good and proper, 'cept when you moaned around it." He leered at Lestrade. "Did the pretty thing never tell you how much he likes that? Bet it might come in handy, no, Inspector? I bet he gets right annoying sometimes. Bet you'd love to be able to shove something in there every time you get tired of listening to him flap that smart, pretty little mouth of his."

Lestrade's jaw dropped at the outright gall and lewdness, and Holmes made a strangled sound. Such filth was seldom heard outside of Whitechapel, and even there, certain rules applied. The fact that he had said such things aloud to a cadre of Scotland Yard officers, about Sherlock Holmes no less, held everyone present in a thrall of shock and numb revulsion, immobile though a current of livewire electricity seemed to buzz through the air, begging an outlet or an end to the surrealism of it.

When Watson failed to coax Holmes into a physical retreat, he craned his neck and hissed, "Lestrade!"

Lestrade cleared his throat, though the lines remained furrowed across his forehead as he said, "I believe that is enough from you, Mister Redding. Come quietly, now."

"Oh, no-no-no," Redding clucked. "Not quietly at all, I'll tell you. Not with such a tight, wet little prize like Mister Holmes here."

Watson didn't even recall moving. He could hear his pulse in his ears, drowning everything in a sea of red behind his eyes as his blood pressure soared to levels fit to induce a stroke. Then the red became a spatter on the sidewalk, and on the head of his cane, and he was fighting only to catch his breath before the blackened spots in his vision occluded all else.

Nothing moved for what seemed like an interminable series of short gasps that Watson nearly deafened himself with as he gradually realized what he had done, and then one of the constables piped up with, "Oh, look at that. Poor bugger must have slipped."

Watson twitched and trembled in place, his nerves a jumble in his body, blood jangling in his veins. He couldn't seem to breathe quickly enough to soothe his own heartbeat, and the medical part of him, though whispering the opposite in the farthest reaches of his mind, barely managed to break through the chaos of it.

"Yeah, he did," another constable offered. "I saw it. Slipped right there in that puddle, he did. Poor bloke." A few others nodded their tacit agreement.

Lestrade stirred himself enough to reach across Watson and pry the cane from his shaking hand. He calmly withdrew a handkerchief and wiped the spot of blood from it before tucking it back into Watson's nerveless fingers. "Sorry to say I wasn't looking at the time. But if that's what you lads all say happened, then it must be true."

Watson wheezed for a moment and then swallowed the foul tang of bile lurking in the back of his throat. He stumbled back a step and then had to pause to lean against his cane, lest he fall over.

"Right," Lestrade barked. "Get him in the wagon, then. Can't have the poor sucker bleedin' out on the sidewalk now. He's liable to clumsy himself dead if we leave him to his own devices."

A random officer grumbled darkly, "Yes, because that would be a right shame."

Lestrade shot him a quelling look and then ordered his men, "Hop to it." He waited until they started reluctantly maneuvering Top Man toward the waiting wagon - rather ungently - and then turned toward Watson. "Doctor."

Watson jerked as a hand landed on his shoulder, and raised his eyes to Lestrade's with considerable difficulty.

Lestrade did not seem even slightly irritated or put out by Watson's clubbing of his suspect. If anything, he appeared grimly satisfied. "Pull yourself together, Doctor Watson."

Watson nodded, his mouth working over a silent, nonspecific…what, apology? Acknowledgement? Something – he didn't know. There were words trapped behind his lips, but he didn't know what they were. So he nodded again and pushed himself mostly upright on his cane.

"We'll take care of all of this here," Lestrade assured him, gesturing at the gawkers crowding the inn door, and a gaggle of poor folk clustered across the street beneath a street lamp. Witnesses, Watson realized – witnesses who could contradict the notion that Redding had simply slipped and knocked himself out. Thomas stood among them, however, with his arms crossed over his burly chest, and he glared at the others in turn as if daring them to say anything in Redding's favor. In fact, he looked nearly as livid as Watson had felt mere moments ago. "Don't you worry about any of it," Lestrade said.

"Yes," Watson croaked, his voice like coal falling into a scuttle. "I'm…apologize. I apologize – "

"For what?" Lestrade demanded, his voice tinged in a subtle warning. "He slipped, Doctor. Remember?" He pressed something cold and hard into Watson's palm.

Watson looked down to find the watch chain dangling through his fingers, the gold heavy in his hand. "Yes, of course. Tripped…or, slipped…" Then Watson shuddered himself back into some semblance of himself and wheeled around. "Holmes?"

Holmes didn't react to his name; he merely stood there with Clarkey at his back, staring down at Redding as the Yard men attempted to move his unconscious bulk into the waiting police wagon.

Watson gathered his wits and stepped to block Holmes' sight of the man. "Come, old man. Time to go now." When that garnered no response either, Watson tried to catch his eye with the pocket watch. Holmes' gaze flickered sightlessly about until they caught the glint of diffuse streetlamps reflecting from the silver timepiece. His lids dropped into a languid blink and he raised a hand to brush the pads of two fingers over the dangling half-sovereign on the chain. Then he drew back, his gaze scattering to eventually fix somewhere in the stark air between himself and one of the horses hitched to the carriage that had brought him here. For whatever reason, he made an absent effort to straighten his shoulders. "Get rid of it."

"Right," Watson told him. "I'll hold into it for you." He secreted it into his pocket and then reached out to grasp Holmes' shoulder.

The contact drew the sort of reaction that words had not. Even though Holmes had to have noticed Watson's hand approaching, he jerked and lashed out with a desperate, panicked sort of mewl caught behind his teeth. It sounded like the wheeze of a punctured squeeze box, really, if grittier.

Watson caught at him, his good shoulder shoved up under Holmes' arm. He could see Holmes' legs trembling, knees about to buckle, and managed to get a grip about his waist before gravity began to pull him down. Holmes tripped over Watson's feet and then tried to twist free, which merely resulted in Watson cinching his arms to haul Holmes upright again before his knees hit the ground. "Into the carriage now, there's a good chap."

Holmes fumbled for purchase against the pavement but it seemed as if his legs had gone rubbery along with most of the rest of him. A few seconds later, he was one degree short of dead weight in Watson's arms. Clarkey hurried forward to lend his own strength, and between them, they managed to drag Holmes away from the ring of coppers and spectators. Watson kept his arms braced around Holmes' waist, all but hugging him from behind as he and Clarkey propelled Holmes to the waiting four-wheeler. One of Holmes' shoes scuffed along the ground, and then his legs abruptly folded out from under him, taking the majority of his body weight with them. Watson narrowly avoided dropping him in a mess all over the curb. As he hoisted Holmes back up, Holmes swept his foot out and nearly tripped Clarkey, but whether it came from a lame attempt to stop them taking him anywhere, or from general uncoordination, Watson could not be sure. Clarkey opened the carriage door and Watson bundled Holmes into it, following immediately after. When he tried to rest a hand on Holmes' tense back, Holmes snarled at him and shoved him off before curling himself into a corner of the bench, eyes blank and saucered, breathing in shallow, irregular bursts like a stunned songbird. Watson sat next to him, but maintained as much distance as the bench allowed.

Lestrade had trailed them unnoticed, and he motioned Clarkey to get in as well. "Stay at Baker Street until I come for you."

"Yes, sir." Clarkey climbed aboard and sat across from Watson, drawing the door shut behind himself, and rapped on the roof to signal the driver. Before the carriage moved off, Thomas stuck his hand through the window and pressed Holmes' pocket watch into Watson's slack fingers. It must have fallen from his pocket in the struggle. He nodded his thanks to Thomas at the last possible moment, and then the carriage wrenched them away.

They rode in silence for some time, Holmes panting audibly in the confined space as the carriage jostled them through dark and unfamiliar – to Watson, at least – streets. Holmes probably knew exactly where they were, as he always did, provided that he was paying any attention; he had his eyes trained out the window, but they did not move to track the scenery.

Eventually, Watson could not overlook Holmes' labored respirations, or the shaking that had seized him, and he reached across the seeming chasm of space that separated them. "Holmes."

Holmes twisted and batted Watson's hand away.

"You have to calm down, old cock, or you'll work yourself into a state." Watson tried again to brush Holmes' shoulder, but this time, Holmes recoiled and tried to backhand him. Watson took the hint and retreated back to his own side of the bench, watching Holmes with the critical eye of a physician rather than a friend. He could not look as a friend right now; it would have pained him too much to compare this man, gradually stilling as he shrank back to his original position on the bench like a flower budding in reverse, to the half-mad genius who routinely wreaked havoc on their shared rooms.

"Doctor?" Clarkey prompted softly.

Watson averted his eyes from Holmes and found Clarkey holding a hip flask out to him. He accepted it with a quiet murmur of gratitude and took a swig, grimacing at the welcome burn, then regarded Holmes again where he sat as if trying to fold in on himself. "Holmes, old boy. I'd like you to take a drink of this." He extended the flask until it impinged on Holmes' narrow field of vision.

Holmes shifted his coiled limbs and then roused himself far enough to blink at the proferred flask. He licked his lips but then shook his head in a halting fashion.

"Just one swallow, Holmes. It'll do you good."

Holmes worked his tongue inside his mouth as if it had gone dry. He did not seem to comprehend Watson's words. "There's a…cold supper. I told Mrs Hudson we wouldn't be late getting back."

Watson's vision wavered but he held firm. "I know. We're on our way home. Now come have a drink of this."

Holmes flinched from nothing and then turned to stare straight ahead at the empty space beside Clarkey. "There were forty two buttons and the cuff links were monogrammed but the silver had not been well kept. I couldn't make out the initials in the tarnish. And I left my scarf…Watson, I do believe I might have caught something. It's dreadfully cold. One should not go out without a scarf. You yell at me for that." His eyes darted a fraction to the right and then fixed again. "I shall have a pipe when we get home. And you'll read by the fire. In your chair. And doze off and lose your place. A full belly always makes you drowsy." He paused as if to reign in his thoughts, but they had evidently run too far afield. "I think one of them was a dock worker. I could smell fish. And there were…rope burns…on his palms… I require my pipe, Watson."

Watson stared, momentarily horrified by the disjointed, empty recitation, and then managed to ask, "Did you not bring it with you?"

"Wasn't supposed to be gone long," Holmes replied. He sounded like his usual self, save for the lack of affect to his words. "It's on the mantle."

"Then of course, you shall have it when we get home."

Holmes nodded, eyelids fluttering as he breathed in ragged droughts of air, and then he mumbled, "Three pipe problem. It's a three pipe problem."

On the other side of the carriage, Clarkey made a point not to stare, but he looked shaken nonetheless.

"Holmes, the brandy." Watson twiddled the flask so that the liquid inside sloshed a bit.

"Yes, we shall have a brandy by the fire." Holmes tightened his arms about himself and returned to his absent vigil out the window, his skin gone too pale in the darkness. "I think…I'm going to be sick."

Watson blinked as he processed that, and then he rapped his cane sharply on the carriage roof to signal the driver to stop. Holmes' back thumped against the carriage wall as they rattled to an abrupt stop, and then Watson reached cautiously past him to push open the door. Holmes launched himself from the four-wheeler and stumbled out onto the cobblestones, but only managed to lurch as far the rear carriage wheel before doubling over. Watson prevented him from toppling forward into his own sick, and even though Holmes gave a startled yelp at being grabbed – which he ended up choking on – he didn't have the wherewithal to really fight Watson's hold on him. Watson wrapped his arms about Holmes' stomach and rode it out with him. He could feel every heave tear through Holmes' back, where Watson had tucked him against his chest. The only things he brought up appeared to be an old cup of tea and the remains of what might have once been a biscuit or two. Clear spittle followed; from Watson's own experience, it was worse when the stomach was already empty.

Holmes eventually stopped retching and slumped back against Watson to catch his breath, eyes tearing from the force of the heaves, his fingers peeling one by one off of the spoke of the carriage wheel he had been gripping for balance. He snuffled and cleared his throat, then swallowed several times as if on the verge of going at it again. Thankfully, he mastered it and then he coughed a few times, shivering violently in Watson's arms. It wasn't until Holmes' breath hitched and he turned his face into Watson's arm, that Watson realized the tears were not entirely due to his throwing up. Watson froze up like rusted clockworks in the corner of an old pawn shop. He had known Holmes to tear up from pain or discomfort, or when seized by withdrawal from one of his drugs, but never before, not even on _that_ night, had Watson known Holmes to openly cry. Even in the sitting room, when Watson had wrenched him from sleep and inadvertently prompted a flashback, Holmes had not truly been crying. Not like this.

"Tell me you weren't listening," Holmes croaked. It was only a whisper, that.

Watson shook his head, nose rubbing through Holmes' hair as he stared blindly ahead. Then he tried to fumble Holmes closer, wrap him up, protect him. As he should have done before. As he _would _have done, had he not been half a cripple with a stupid useless leg. He should have been there that night. What good was sitting by the fire to his leg? He knew it didn't help; it only left the muscles to grow stiff from disuse. If he had just gone with Holmes to the Punch Bowl, then everything would still be alright – not perfect, but scores closer to okay. They should be sipping warm brandy right now and laughing over trifles, and Watson should be cursing at his atonal violin plucking and shoving food down his throat and telling him to take a damn bath because he was filthy, and even shameless Bohemians like him should have limits. This never should have happened – Watson was supposed to watch Holmes' back and remind him to take his revolver and appear as if by magic at the last minute to keep him safe.

"Tell me you didn't hear what he said." Holmes curled the way leaves do when they die. "Tell me…please…"

Watson squeezed his eyes shut, tight as he could, his whole face screwed up with the effort. "I didn't hear him." His voice sounded hoarse, as if he had been screaming for days and only just gotten it back.

Holmes drew farther into himself, but he turned to press his shoulder against Watson's chest as he did. "John, you weren't – " Holmes' chest jumped under Watson's hand, cutting him off, and then he gave a wet, wretched cough. " – you weren't listening - you didn't hear it…"

"No, I didn't." He said it like a promise already long since broken. "Not a word, Holmes."

"…say you weren't listening, tell me…"

Watson folded around him, falling back to lean against the carriage wheel lest he fall over in the street. "I didn't hear him, Holmes. I swear, I didn't hear him." He didn't realize that his own affirmation had become a plea until Holmes strangled a dejected sob and fell silent in his arms. Watson sucked in a fluttering lungful of air that smelt of Holmes and then breathed, all but inaudible, "I swear it."

Holmes burrowed deeper into the open folds of Watson's coat and shook his head. He didn't need to remind Watson that he was a terrible liar; they both knew it well. Some sort of strangled squeak got muffled in Watson's waistcoat, probably because Watson was squeezing him too hard, but Holmes offered no actual protest. He did lift a hand, however, to paw at Watson's waistcoat as if inspecting it for lint. "You have seventeen buttons."

An inarticulate sound hit the back of Watson's throat and withered there. He barely managed to implore, "Don't. Please, don't."

Rather than continue examining whatever it was he was so intent upon, Holmes closed his fingers over the fabric under his hand and held it.

Watson felt his shirt pull taut against his back as a result. He shifted his grip as if to rise, but Holmes did not budge. "We need to get out of the street, Holmes. Come – on your feet." He tried to lever himself up using the carriage itself as a handhold, but as he started to pull away, Holmes scrambled to maintain his grip. The next thing Watson's knew, Holmes had his arms coiled around Watson's waist, clinging like a viper with all of his not inconsiderable strength. Half of Watson's breath left him in a hurry, air squeezed from a bellows, and ended up back on his knees. He peered helplessly down at the dark mess of hair pressed against his ribs, and then up at Clarkey as if the constable had it in his power to render this all a fiction.

It was a feat, getting back into the carriage with Holmes latched about his middle. Clarkey had to pull Watson forcibly to his feet, and Watson dragged Holmes along with him. He felt like a mother possum, rather than a mother hen, what with Holmes hanging off of him like that - a toddler separated from his caretaker for the first time. Holmes allowed Watson to pry one of his arms off, and then Holmes claimed that hand for himself, along with the arm attached to it, and practically crawled all the way up to Watson's collar. He flinched when Watson tried to touch him with his other hand, though, and shifted around Watson so that he was nearly behind him with his nose planted in Watson's shoulder. Just for form's sake it seemed, Holmes ordered, "Do not touch me."

All Watson said to that was, "Speak up if you're going to be ill again."

"_You_ speak up."

A faint smile graced Watson's lips at the familiar if automatic banter. He did not think that Holmes was aware of quite how often he retorted in that fashion, or of how young and petulant it made him sound. Even missing for only a mere week, Watson had felt its absence, though he only now realized as much. It almost tempted him into a sense of ease, deluded him into thinking that everything would indeed turn out okay. Almost. He knew perfectly well that Holmes could have responded as such in his sleep; it was no indicator of the health of his mind.

They ended up riding the rest of the way to Baker Street like that: Watson trying to sit on the carriage bench in the most nonthreatening manner possible while Holmes curled about Watson's arm and rocked gently enough that Watson could have ascribed it to the swaying of the carriage. Though the conflicting motions seemed to turn Holmes' stomach, he did not ask them to stop again. He seemed more calm, though – no longer balanced on the knife edge of an hysteric fit – though Watson could not be sure that he counted it an improvement that Holmes had so subdued himself. He continued to clutch at Watson, after all, and if it weren't for the chill air to excuse it, Watson would have been slightly more alarmed than he already was by the fine tremors that coursed through Holmes' thin body, easily felt where he had pressed himself to Watson's flank.

Watson cut off a barrage of musings that threatened to turn into self loathing and glanced at Holmes from the corner of his eye. His longtime partner did not seem in any way present, physically at his side though he was. When they got home, Watson would have to convince Holmes to submit to a sedative. Not for the first time, Watson wished that their places could be reversed; it would have been terrible indeed to have gone through what Holmes had, but Watson would have gladly borne it if he had been given the choice. He knew that in many ways, he was more equipped to deal with this than his very dear friend. Holmes was a brilliant and clever man, but sheltered because of it. There were simply some things that he could not comprehend.

They reached 221B without further incident, and once the carriage stopped, Holmes scrambled out. Watson trailed him inside while Clarkey took up a vigil on the front stoop. Cartright and the boys were back, Watson noted; he could make out the irregular shapes of them huddled in the shadows on the other side of the street. Cartright himself detached from the murk and held up a hand when he caught Watson looking, somehow managing reassurance and contrition in the same motion. He was only apologizing for ratting Watson out; there was no way that word could have reached him already of the calamity that had occurred at Michelle's rotting establishment. Watson made a note to buy the lad a pouch of tobacco in thanks for the information, however ill the night had gone because of it. They had one man in custody, which was leagues better than yesterday. The others could only follow, and then perhaps they could begin to put this whole sordid business behind them.

-tbc


	6. Chapter 6

"Tea, gentlemen?"

Watson gave a vicious start and turned to watch Mrs Hudson pick her way through the mess of the sitting room with a tea service balanced carefully on one arm, navigating obstacles with the sort of experience that betrayed just how long ago she had given up on complaining about Holmes' housekeeping habits. She reached the table and flicked random detritus away to clear a space, though her gaze kept straying to the forlorn figure that Holmes cut, sitting in his chair beside the hearth fire. Watson had been standing some sort of guard over him for the better part of fifteen minutes, waiting for a crack to spiderweb its way out from the center point of the silence, like the pattern caused by a soft impact on a window pane. "Thank you, Mrs Hudson. We're expecting Lestrade shortly, and Clarke with him."

Mrs Hudon gave a curt little nod and straightened to cock her head at Holmes' rounded back. "I thought I spotted someone on the stoop."

Watson offered her a noncommittal smile. "The Constable was kind enough to escort us home."

From her expression, Mrs Hudson clearly wanted to know why a police escort had been called for, not to mention wondering where Watson had been all day and what had occurred to leave Holmes so shaken and silent in his chair, completely unaware of her scrutiny. Of course, she could hardly demand an explanation, not only because of the inopportune moment, but because it was not her place to express curiosity at the private activities of her two gentlemen lodgers. Not that such rules of propriety often stopped her, but this was not just another of Holmes' harebrained schemes to decimate his living space; it was an intensely private matter that Mrs Hudson was not supposed to have any knowledge of. "Well. Two more cups, then."

"If you please," Watson replied. He shook his head at the concerned look that Mrs Hudson offered – a pointed flickering of her eyes from Watson to Holmes, and back. Mrs Hudson replied with a dubious arch of an eyebrow but whisked herself politely away just the same. Once the sitting room door had clicked shut – Mrs Hudson had adopted Watson's newfound gentle habits in that regard – Watson tensed one side of his mouth and looked down at the back of Holmes' head. "Tea, old boy?"

Holmes twitched and then finally roused himself from his inwardly-focused stupor. He remained as he was, however – perched on the edge of his chair with his elbows on his knees and his hands worrying at his loosely entwined fingers, shoulders hunched and back rounded so that Watson could just make out the knobby line of his spine beneath his clothes. Though he maintained the subdued air in which he had taken refuge, he seemed more himself than he had in a long time. Watson watched him scratch at a cuticle, and then Holmes sighed and lifted his head to stare past Watson's hip. "You must think me pathetic."

"Hardly," Watson snorted.

Holmes turned his head away to scowl, and then he suddenly grew twitchy and agitated. "That isn't how it happened, you know. All those…things he said – that's not how it was."

"I know." Watson started to grasp Holmes by the shoulder and then stopped himself. At the moment, Holmes was a bundle of nerves in the worst possible way, and very likely still walking a tightrope between passably unsettled and an outright fit, no matter how much he sounded like himself; his words did not compliment the context of his mannerisms. So Watson closed his fist around the space between them and drew it back. "Tea?" he repeated.

Holmes grunted nonspecifically and took to glaring at the coal scuttle. "I didn't beg. They made me ask, but I did _not _beg. And I certainly didn't – didn't _crawl_ anywhere. They dragged me off the damn street."

Watson bit the tip of his tongue behind tightly closed lips and examined his house shoes before skirting behind Holmes' chair. On his way to the tea tray, he gave in to the mostly self-serving impulse to run his hand over Holmes' back in a gesture meant to convey support and comfort.

Holmes twisted his shoulder away the moment Watson touched it, and continued fuming impotently at the fireplace. "And he told those – those _lies_ in front of bloody _everyone_, Watson. Did you see them? Did you see their faces? They feel sorry for me."

"Why don't we speak of something a little less inflammatory."

Holmes wrinkled his nose in disgust, thought about it, and then muttered darkly, "I will not be pitied; I won't stand for it."

Watson poured two cups of tea and then finally caught sight of the second tray on the sideboard to his left: the cold supper that Mrs Hudson had prepared before Holmes went out looking for him. The thought of eating anything now nearly tore a morbid laugh from Watson's throat, but he strangled the urge and absorbed himself in adding cream to his tea, and then an obscene amount of sugar to Holmes' cup. Holmes' affinity for cocaine left him with a constant sweet tooth. As Watson crossed the sitting room with two teacups balanced precariously on Mrs Hudson's patterned china saucers, Holmes launched himself from his chair and stalked to the windows, totally ignoring Watson's exasperated sigh and the cup of tea that Watson followed him with. "Holmes, come now and have a drink of this. It will calm your nerves."

Holmes glanced askance at the tea and then scoffed at it. "I will not drink her potions."

That wrung an involuntary flash of a fettered grin from Watson, but he sobered immediately. "It's only tea, Holmes. Look." Watson made a show out of taking a huge gulp of the stuff for Holmes' benefit. Keeping a straight face in light of all the sugar bombarding his taste buds was a feat with which he had long years of practice. Watson swallowed, scrubbed his tongue across his gums, and then held the cup out again. "You really need to stop being so suspicious of poor Mrs Hudson. People will begin to think you're paranoid."

"She has it out for me," Holmes insisted. The usual banter, though often delivered deadpan, fell a shade short of levity in the air between them.

Watson snorted anyway. "She has not."

"Mm," Holmes grunted, his mouth dragged down in a dubious frown that captured half his face in its sternness as he finally accepted the tea. He wrinkled his nose as he deigned to sip at it, and then he grudgingly pronounced it passable as he stalked back to his chair. After Watson sat down across from him, Holmes eyed him and then engrossed himself in a study of the way the tea sloshed against the inner surface of the china. "Watson?"

Watson delayed answering by pretending that he desperately needed a nice, deep sip of his own tea. Then he lifted an eyebrow in appreciation and set the cup and saucer on the table beside his chair. "Yes, Holmes?"

Apparently, Holmes had been waiting like a crossbow catch to spring, because the second Watson finished speaking, he blurted out, "What if he was right?"

Watson's mouth turned down in dour disapproval. Though he suspected the answer, he still felt it necessary to ask, "Who?"

"You know who," Holmes mumbled.

Watson scowled. "He was not right at all. About anything." He picked up a book and turned it over to peruse the spine. "The man is a troglodyte. I would hardly trust him to so much as shine a pair of shoes, much less pass judgment on the inclinations of civilized gentlemen."

Holmes nodded, but to the sideboard; he seemed not to have actually heard Watson's words, only the tone of his voice. "They say that inverts can recognize one another. And he said – "

Watson slammed the book down, effectively cutting Holmes off and drawing his startled attention at the same time. "You are not an invert, Holmes; we have been over this a dozen times, and I will not suffer this ridiculous reasoning from you any longer."

"But Watson, I – "

"Enough!" Watson shoved himself to his feet, one leg weaker than the other, which showed in his stance as he stalked across the diminutive space of the tiger skin rug between them. Planting his hands on the armrests of Holmes' chair, Watson crowded Holmes back against the cushions and hissed, "I won't put up with this talk from you, Holmes. You will cease tearing yourself down, do you understand me? _Nothing_ they said about you is true."

Holmes gaped at Watson, the whites of his eyes showing as he drew one knee up against his chest as a transparent and useless barrier against Watson's well-intentioned if too fervent fit of temper. "We share a bed, Watson." His voice shook apart at the very edges where the sounds of each syllable began to unravel into silence, or into the start of the next word.

With perhaps too much force, Watson countered, "As brothers. Has it ever seemed otherwise to you?"

"No." Holmes shook his head but he also wilted under Watson's hard stare and tried to shrink into the seat as he found that he could draw back no farther. "But it seems so to other people."

Watson clenched his jaw to aid in reigning in the temper that threatened to leak even further out, and then exhaled slowly through his nose. "Are you going to quote Lestrade again? Because I can promise you that he understands our sleeping arrangements."

Holmes hesitated, and the suggestion of fear marring his features actually pained Watson. "There are other things."

Watson failed to suppress the twitch at the juncture of his cheek muscles, where a dimple might show in times of mirth. "Then by all means, lay it out for me."

For whatever reason, rather then backing down at the open challenge, Holmes obliged him. "We often eat from the same plate. You know exactly how I take my tea, and I can tell how much discomfort you are in by the amount of pain that does _not_ show on your face. You press my hand when we take hansom rides, and even though the bench is wide enough for us to maintain a seemly distance, we always touch in the middle. When the nights are cold, we bathe together to save the hot water. You put up with me when no other would, and you profess to love me as a brother, yet what I see in your face is in no way reminiscent of what I see in Mycroft's. You worry yourself sick over my wellbeing, and you forgive even the most grievous trespasses that I make against your person or property. And recently, you have taken to kissing my cheeks or my hair, and rather than maintaining your accustomed boundaries at night, you encourage me to lie against you."

Watson was not certain what he had expected. The calm listing of evidence still took him faintly by surprise; he had expected irrationality and misconstrued emotional evidence and bastardized quotes from various know-nothings, not a dissection of their lives together and corruptions of their innocent affections and comfort at each other's presence. Watson had no concerted refutation at the ready, but some sort of protest seemed in order, so he rolled his eyes and snapped, "Holmes, really."

"It wasn't always so. Before I left Switzerland, you behaved towards me in a manner very similar to Mycroft's. I could recognize friendship in it. But your regard for me has changed."

"Of course my regard has changed," Watson snapped, but he did not care to dwell on the reasons for it.

Holmes simply changed tack and pressed on. "I have never lain with a woman; they hardly even interest me."

"Lack of interest in carnal pursuits does not make you a deviant. It makes you celibate."

Holmes blinked, made a face as he summoned both saliva and some intangible brand of gumption, and then he said, almost too softly to carry in spite of the fact that Watson's face still hovered disconcertingly close to the top of Holmes' head, "You mourned me longer than you mourned your own wife. Your stories were the most extensive eulogy ever written."

Watson's gaze fell to Holmes' knees and then he briefly shut his eyes. "It was too sudden. I wasn't prepared for it."

"I know," Holmes breathed back. "That's why I did it."

Watson's breathing faltered, as if his lungs had filled with a vapor that crowded out breathable air. "What? Holmes, I know that you have often been irate with me, but I cannot believe that you would ever make a concerted effort to harm me that deeply."

"You give me too much credit." Holmes shook his head and slid sideways in the chair, putting a few additional inches between their faces, though he had trapped himself inexorably between the armrests by doing so. "I wanted to blindside you because that was what it felt like when you left me to marry her. I wanted you to hurt like that."

All Watson could think was a formless denial. They did not talk about this, about Reichenbach. Ever. Holmes receded in Watson's vision as he stood and backed away to fall into his own chair again. "If you value our friendship at all, you will drop this subject and never bring it up again."

"But don't you see what that means?" Holmes demanded, his eyes alight with fervent energy. "It took me years to realize my own intentions by doing that – why I wanted to wound you so deeply. I've seen it often enough in clients, in criminals – "

With his eyes firmly shut to block out the ramifications of this conversation, Watson bit out, "You are confused. You have said before that I am the only intimate friend you have ever had, and as for brotherly affections, I would hardly hold Mycroft up as the standard for expressions of fraternal love. You simply have no experience of these things, Holmes, and it has addled your perception." Good god, did Holmes actually realize what he had just said? That he had felt scorned at being abandoned, as if he had been traded away by a lover? "And if you will permit me to observe, you are not very well acquainted with your own 'softer' side. You don't handle it well. Being part of a healthy and intimate friendship was no doubt unsettling to you in some ways, and you could not properly react to my inevitable marriage. Your immaturity in that arena led you to behave the way a child would when rebuffed by a playground friend, and I don't hold it against you. I have forgiven you for it a dozen times already, no matter that I spent three years thinking you dead and blaming myself for allowing it to happen."

Holmes looked up and pierced Watson with a gaze that could have skewered someone less well acquainted with the sort of scrutiny with which Holmes treated all things. "Do you really think that?"

Watson stared at him, not because Holmes had caught him out for a dissembler, but because Holmes _hadn't_. What Watson had just said should have insulted him at the very least, but Holmes looked grateful for the unflattering estimation of his character. No…Holmes had no idea what he had basically confessed. He had said the words, but he did not truly _know_. And the last thing Watson wanted was to be the one to explain it to him. "Yes," Watson breathed. He hoped that the doe-eyed expression on his face did not betray him. It struck him that this one lie alone could be the one that sent him to hell, assuming that he had ever been bound elsewhere. "Yes, that is what I think."

Holmes' face started to crease into a smile, eyes shining in relief, but then his gaze flickered off to one side in sudden thought and his mouth hovered on the verge of a frown.

Desperate now to curtail any further reflection on these issues, Watson said, "I do not wish to speak of Reichenbach again, Holmes. I want your solemn word."

The curt statement wrenched Holmes back to the present, and after some befuddled contemplation of Watson's posture and complexion, he gave a hesitant nod. "Of course. I apologize for distressing you."

Watson moistened his lips and nodded acceptance of the apology. What now? What should he do now?

A moment later, Holmes offered, "A brandy?"

"Yes, that would be very welcome," Watson replied, his voice like a cascade of gravel.

Holmes returned after an interval of time that Watson apparently passed with a mind perfectly empty of all thought. "John…good heavens. You have gone white as a sheet." The brandy glass clanked against the edge of the tea saucer as Holmes set it down. "Are you ill? Have I upset you so much? I should not have mentioned the falls; I know you despise speaking of it."

Watson swallowed hard and shook his head, Holmes' face swimming into focus before him. "No, it's…a delayed reaction to tonight's events."

"Are you certain?" Holmes' gaze moved spasmodically over Watson's body. "You weren't injured, were you? I should have asked."

"Enough," Watson breathed on a tremulous exhale. "Just stop, Holmes. Stop. Now. And let me be for a moment."

Holmes looked stricken but he nodded and backed away across the tiger skin rug until he could lift himself back up into his chair. "I'm sorry."

Watson closed his eyes for a moment and simply begged, "Please. Can't you let anything alone?"

Holmes dropped his eyes and then hugged his legs to his chest as he bit his lip and tried to find something captivating about the disheveled bookshelves and clutter strewn across the far side of the room. A moment later, Watson heard him mutter scathingly to himself, "Really need to learn when to shut up." A dark, hateful snort followed and Watson looked up to find Holmes glaring intently off to one side though his contempt was obviously self-direction. Holmes gnawed at the lip caught between his teeth tightened his grip on his own legs as he apparently fought with himself over whether to be furious or resigned at his own ineptitude. Neither seemed likely to win out any time soon.

"Did it really hurt that much?" The words were out before Watson could reconsider them. Though the clarification probably was not necessary, Watson added, "My moving out of here, I mean. Getting married."

Holmes sniffed and resolutely closed his mouth, his head ducked in opposition to the question and all that it implied – not only that leaving had caused Holmes pain, but that it had not occurred to Watson until now that the hurt and sense of betrayal could have truly run that deep. The fact that Holmes refused to answer said more than any words could have.

At the time, Watson had read Holmes' jealousy and possessiveness as a childish form of selfishness – he always had. Apparently, so had Holmes…until he had been given cause to doubt his own inclinations, and by extension, the motivations for his past actions. "You do realize that I never meant to hurt you by marrying. You have always been my dearest friend, old fellow."

Holmes appeared as if he would have preferred to maintain his silence, but instead, he spit out, "Is that how you justified such spite?"

Watson straightened in his chair, and a flare of indiscriminate temper lent color back to his face. He knew that he should keep his own counsel for now, as both of their normally cool temperaments had been worn raw by recent events, but Watson had never been good at tamping down his anger once it flared, and he had needed an outlet for weeks now. "You did not just imply that I sought Mary out simply to spite you."

"No," Holmes replied, his tone clipped and edged in steel. "But that did not stop you from constantly rubbing in my face how much better your life would be the moment you moved out and no longer had to deal with me."

Watson bristled in spite of the warning floating through his mind that they should not be having this argument now. Or ever, for that matter; surely enough time and mutual hurts had passed to render the issue unworthy of further pursuit. "I was excited and in love. Forgive me for expressing such."

"You did not express excitement," Holmes countered, his voice raised to the point that Mrs Hudson might soon take notice. They had not argued so heatedly in months, if then. "You repeatedly enumerated all of my shortcomings and every annoyance you had to put up with by lodging here, and then after you escaped these accommodations, you didn't speak to me for four months! I had to seek you out and practically beg your assistance on a pittance of a case just to spend an afternoon with you. Do you know how humiliating it is to realize that you've become the beggar scraping for a shilling's worth of your dearest friend's precious time? You only sought me out in turn when Mary was cross with you and you needed a respite from her oppression. _Then_, I was good enough to be seen with. How was I not to resent you for that?"

Watson merely stared, speechless. …_resent you_…_how was I not to resent you…_ And faking his own death had been escape and revenge, both? Watson could not credit that. Perhaps Holmes' decision to run away from his own life had been suspect and not entirely rational, but Watson could not believe Holmes capable of such simplicity and pettiness.

Holmes coiled himself more tightly into his chair and made certain that his gaze did not intersect Watson's. "There are times when I wish I could live up to your literary depictions, Watson. That man was never so pathetically dependant on a friend who could hardly stand him."

The bottom dropped out from Watson's stomach with such force that the resulting shortness of breath left tears of shock filming over his eyes. "You don't mean that."

Holmes shrugged and tucked himself more firmly into the chair's contours. "It doesn't matter anymore, does it. You came back, and now you reside in my bed, so I can hardly claim that I am not the better for it."

Watson aborted an urge to shake his head and counter that Holmes was the one who came back. But perhaps to Holmes, it was Watson who disappeared first. As for the rest of that statement, Watson had no idea where to begin addressing the obvious note of continued resentment. "If you wanted me to sleep elsewhere, all you ever had to do was ask."

"I never suspected otherwise."

Any further discussion had to be abandoned at the chime of the bell. Watson glanced over his shoulder to listen as Mrs Hudson answered the door, followed by the polite murmur of Lestrade's voice as he greeted her. The man had horrible timing; if he had only arrived ten minutes earlier, they could have avoided this entire disquieting argument. No doubt, once suitably distracted, the subject would have slipped Holmes' mind entirely, and Watson would not have had to worry at the repercussions of rehashing old grievances on top of the present situation. For both their sakes.

Holmes remained sullen and silent in his chair throughout Lestrade's visit, and outright refused to provide a statement for the official record. After much cajoling, Holmes simply confirmed that Watson's statement matched his own recollection, and absorbed himself in an old newspaper that he had cast aside just that morning as holding nothing of interest. The lie as to the source of the contusion on Redding's skull became the truth from that point on; Lestrade read off a number of 'eyewitness' accounts to the fact just to confirm Watson's 'alibi.'

After Lestrade had concluded his official business, he folded his notebook and then peered impassively at the mop of black hair protruding above the edge of the newspaper. "Mister Holmes, I just want you to know that the boys don't believe a word he said."

The newspaper inched downward until Holmes' eyes appeared, two smoldering pits of displeasure. "I believe that you are mistaken as to my need for reassurance."

"You may be correct, Mister Holmes," Lestrade returned without inflection.

Watson cleared his throat and gestured toward the sitting room door. "Thank you, Inspector. But as the hour is quite late, I am sure that you are eager to get home. We don't want to keep you."

A finer request to get lost could not have been crafted by the Queen herself. Lestrade offered a smile in response and politely stood. "Indeed, I am rather exhausted. Shall I stop by tomorrow afternoon to let you know how things progress?"

Watson opened his mouth to thank Lestrade and accept his proposal, but Holmes interjected neatly, "A telegram will suffice, Inspector. You need not put yourself out on my account."

Lestrade retained his stoicism with little difficulty, though he noticed how Holmes' attitude nettled Watson. "Very kind of you, Mister Holmes. I would be delighted to stop in for tea."

Holmes crumpled the newspaper in his lap, his mouth opening to deliver some form of retort, but Watson hustled Lestrade out the door before it could come to fruition. He granted Lestrade a covert smile of gratitude and then retreated to the sitting room while Lestrade recovered his coat and hat from Mrs Hudson in the downstairs foyer.

The click of the lock on their door drowned out the last of Lestrade's farewells, and Watson slid his shoulders along the wood paneling as he turned to wearily gaze at Holmes, his back propped against the doorjamb. Eventually, a sigh seemed the only option, and Watson mashed a hand over his eyes as he vented such, various fingers gouging at his brows. "Holmes, for whatever it's worth, I should not have grown angry with you earlier, and I apologize for it."

A series of flutters and clicks, then creaks of the chair betrayed a few hurried, uneasy movements, and then the soft thumps of footsteps prompted Watson to lower his hand. Holmes wasn't looking at him but he was approaching, his entire manner downcast, not to mention where he put his eyes. When he came within an arm's breadth of Watson, Holmes stopped, fingered his lip while he shifted his weight, and then he pushed himself up into Watson's grasp the way an insistent dog might.

Watson pulled him in and rested his chin against Holmes' temple, allowing his eyes to drift shut. The faint odor of cheap ale and public house clung to Holmes' person, but being so hard to detect, it only just made Watson's notice at all, and so was not particularly unpleasant. "Steady on, dear fellow," Watson murmured into his hair.

"I'm sorry I said all those things," Holmes replied forlornly. "I don't want to fight with you anymore – I never wanted that."

"Same here, on all counts."

Holmes angled more firmly against him and burrowed his way into Watson's chest, his nose coming to rest against Watson's collar. Into the fabric, Holmes mumbled, "I don't want to make you leave again."

Watson tightened his grip and promised, "There is no 'again', Holmes. You did not make me leave before, and there is nothing you could ever do to make me go now."

"I made you leave," Holmes argued, but it was only a flat remark. "You found someone better and it made you leave."

Watson bit his lip, wondering how such notions had ever entered the head of someone as devoted to logic as Sherlock Holmes, and knowing that in some way, he was himself at least partly to blame for it. Then he merely said, "I am going to mix you a tonic, alright old boy? Something to help you sleep."

Holmes did not react right away, and Watson felt rather than saw the moment when Holmes opened his eyes, for he stiffened minutely. "Would you tell me if you wanted to leave again?"

Beyond troubled, Watson inscribed a few circles over Holmes' scapulae and then gently disentangled himself. "You will feel better in the morning."

"Then you would not," Holmes concluded. "Why? Has it already happened? I have imposed too much again, haven't I."

"What?" Watson grasped Holmes by the elbows to hold him in place. "Holmes, do be sensible."

Trapped at arm's length by the hands gripping his forearms, Holmes squirmed slightly to one side and flung his gaze to the corner where the umbrella stand resided.

Watson gave him a light shake, and Holmes raised his hands as he cringed. "That is enough," Watson enjoined sternly.

Holmes started to shake his head, and the stuttering uncertainty of it grew to a concerted effort that seemed designed to deny absolutely everything. "I don't mean to be such trouble."

"I know you don't. Holmes, I am begging you to stop thinking these things."

"But I cannot!" Holmes wailed. "Watson, they are everywhere. Everything they said, and I can _feel _them, and smell the rot on their breath, and they won't go away. They say that I am an invert and that I am corrupting you by it, and for the life of me, I cannot prove them wrong."

"That is ludicrous – Holmes, to think that you of all people are corrupting me – "

"There is nearly twenty years worth of evidence to support it. You were respectable before you met me, and now even Lestrade thinks that your regard for me is a sin. And they saw it, Watson – somehow, they knew. They saw something that even I could not, and they _knew_."

"I will not listen to any more of this filth, Holmes. To have an intimate acquaintance is not a sin. To be _your friend_ is not evidence of corrupted morals!"

"But we sleep together. Watson, don't you see? Normal people don't do that."

Watson flared his nostrils, his head shaking of its own accord. "Soldiers do that all the time, Holmes. To share warmth, to protect each other – "

"I am not a soldier, and neither one of us is at war."

"War is a subjective state of mind," Watson countered, his fury a mask for a dawning sense of horror at the method by which Holmes was systematically destroying the very foundations of both their lives. "We have never crossed a line of indecency with each other, Holmes; you have _never_ tried to tempt me to such. And _I _need to know that you are still with me. If that means that we share a bed, then so be it. I will not risk you slipping away again."

"Don't you see, Watson? That is half the problem. Your insistence that I was not truly dead bordered on delusional. You hardly noticed your own wife's decline because you were too obsessed with immortalizing me in print. If someone had not announced her death to you, I am not certain that you would have even noticed her missing, and _I relished it_. I had become the most important thing to you – against your will, I _finally _mattered more than anyone else."

One hour, Watson thought. Oneblasted hour in the company of the lowest scum that London had to offer, and one questioned assumption about his own inclinations had led Holmes to this? Watson shook his head and then in a snarl of rage, he barked, "Stop it!"

"I am trying!" Holmes pressed his palms flat against Watson's chest and then attempted to simultaneously shove him away and twist closer. "I don't _want_ to think these things, Watson – I don't want to think that I could be so horrible and never even know it. But they put it there, and maybe they're wrong, but I can't _prove_ it. They could be right; I could be just like them."

"You are _nothing like them_!" Watson yelled.

Holmes did not seem to even register Watson's outburst. "They deny their inclinations and then indulge their baser needs by assaulting men on the street, and I indulge mine by stealing your affections from your innocent, dying wife and using them to corrupt you into the sort of man who doesn't even know that what he's doing with his friend is wrong." He contorted himself in such a fashion that his expression became obscured in the crook of Watson's elbow, and then a vague whisper of words reached Watson's ears. "I think I am going mad."

Nothing but their breathing could be heard for several seconds, occluding all else. Then Watson's own trembling voice broke the silence, strained far beyond his ability to censor. "No. I won't allow it. You have been used in the most grievous manner, and you are confused by it and… I am going to fix you a tonic, and you are going to drink it, and we will have no further talk of madness. Do you understand me?"

Holmes grasped a handful of Watson's waistcoat where it wrapped over his flank and wiped the side of his face over Watson's other sleeve.

Watson did not realize just how shaken he was by Holmes' final pronouncement until he had drawn Holmes too close for friendly intent. With no comprehension of what he was doing, Watson shook him hard enough to elicit a startled cry, and shouted, "_Do you understand?_"

A panicked bleat tore itself from Holmes throat and he wrenched himself toward the floor.

Watson hauled him back up by his shirtfront and shook him again, even harder this time. "Answer me!"

Holmes stilled so abruptly that it shattered Watson's sudden terror-born fury.

As if Holmes had burned him, Watson released him and backed away, his back thumping against the wall. "Dear god. Holmes, I apologize. I don't know what came over me."

Holmes straightened slowly that he might have been moving underwater, against a current. He tugged his clothes back into their proper shape, his eyes fixed blindly on a number of random points near Watson's right shoe, and then he warily met Watson's gaze. His voice came too frightfully calm for Watson's liking when he finally replied, "I understand." Then he wandered away in fits and starts, glancing at Watson every few seconds as if to be certain that he would not follow to offer more violence.

Watson's legs buckled and the crumpled as he slid down the wall in a rustle and thump of slackening limbs. His face came to rest against one shivering palm, and he fought merely to breathe for a great while. He longed for the days when Holmes had the gall to strike back at such infractions – for the small number fistfights they had gotten into over the years. Anything but this meek obedience.

Somewhere on the other side of the room, Holmes continued walking about, picking things up and setting them down again. Eventually, a clink of china reached Watson's ears, and then Holmes shuffled along the perimeter of the room toward him. Watson looked up to find Holmes offering him a fresh cup of tea, his features schooled into an impenetrable mask that nonetheless betrayed a certain anxiety at how Watson might react to his olive branch. They stared at each other in like kind for many long seconds, and then Watson relieved him of the teacup.

Before Holmes could rise from his half crouch, Watson reached up to cup the back of his neck. The moment froze and then Holmes practically fell into his embrace. Watson clutched him as tightly as his trembling limbs allowed and Holmes climbed into his lap, his arms wound around Watson's torso with the same aim.

"We will get through this," Watson vowed in a voice devoid of every last shred of strength, though a startling kind of conviction can rise from the lack of it. He received no response, but he hadn't expected one. He had not meant it as a promise to Holmes, but rather as a thinly veiled threat to himself. "I will get you through this."

Eventually, Holmes nodded, but his words struck Watson hollow inside. "You were ever the last martyr to my cause, dear fellow."

* * *

The next morning was strange for both of them. Holmes seemed intent on pretending that the previous day had not taken place at all, and Watson kept staring at him, awaiting Holmes' next attempt to prove himself some kind of monster – to show their long and intimate association for an offense against nature that somehow owed its existence to Holmes' own perversions. Things settled instead, and Watson let himself believe that the verbal altercation the night before had been nothing more than a moment of confusion on Holmes' part, born of mental exhaustion and the stress of the past month and a half. In fact, Holmes seemed to come out of the fog that he had existed in to varying degrees since the attack, and even consented to answer all of the correspondences that had piled up over the weeks.

But the burgeoning closeness that Watson had been steadily growing used to evaporated. Holmes forcibly reverted to the sorts of habits he had been wont to affect before his false death – a dearth of casual touches, a marked formality of speech that sounded even colder for having been absent so long…solitary rending of the violin in place of intimate conversation. They continued to share a bed out of some mutually silent accord, but the invisible line down the center of the mattress returned, and Holmes made every effort not to stray so much as a pinky finger past it. It sorely tried Watson's nerves, knowing that the warmer version of his friend that he loved so dearly had been subsumed once again, and that he had to respect that boundary.

Simply to preserve his own sanity, Watson found himself behaving as he had during the so-called Great Hiatus. He took to scribbling half the days away, lost in cases set in comparatively happier times when neither of them had ever been given cause to doubt that their unusual bond was an innocent thing. It was not a new revelation to Watson that many of their joint habits could easily be viewed with suspicion, but the attack had evidently been a catalyst for them both. Watson now skimmed his case notes with a fresh and jaundiced eye, his gaze catching over unnecessary lyricisms and florid phraseology, all pertaining to some part of Holmes. It had come as a shock the first time that Watson had noted his literary confessions obscured within detailed case notes, late in the year 1892, more than 18 months after Holmes' supposed death. He had loved Holmes very deeply, though in perfectly chaste innocence; that much could not be denied by anyone.

Now, Watson looked over his own cramped penmanship in light of the year since Holmes' return, and wondered if there truly _weren't_ indecent inclinations concealed behind their regard for each other. Holmes evidently thought that there were, and that they were an ugly truth. Watson could not be sure, himself. And he did not want to be; he only knew that losing whatever they had gained by three years' parting was not a price he wanted to pay for peace of mind. He needed his own Holmes back, and not the one who had coldly left him to mourn an absent corpse. He needed the kinder, more open one who had come back to him – the one who made the effort now to show his appreciation for a friendship that before, he had heartlessly taken for granted. It pained Watson to watch the old, aloof Holmes strangle that softer fellow.

As such, Watson was relieved to receive a message from Lestrade several days later; the sitting room had grown oppressive under the weight of their shared attempts to return to a superficial routine of normalcy.

Watson picked Lestrade out of the crowd with ease and then threaded his way through the pub. It was located in Whitehall, a few blocks from Scotland Yard, and Watson had come at Lestrade's request to meet somewhere other than the official headquarters. It seemed a little queer, but Watson was well accustomed to oddness in the transaction of certain types of business, courtesy of having been educated on the subject by Holmes himself. Perhaps it involved the gentleman Fourth Man. If the bastard was classed, then a certain degree of tact and subterfuge would naturally be involved in bringing him to justice.

"Inspector." Watson extended a hand as Lestrade rose to greet him, and they shook politely. "You seem perturbed. Is the interrogation going poorly?" If Lestrade answered in the affirmative, Watson had every intention of volunteering to go a round with the foul frigger himself. It had been four days, after all; they must soon have something to show for their efforts.

"No, actually," Lestrade replied. "It went surprisingly well, if you can call it that." He breathed out pensively as he reclaimed his seat and slid a pint of ale across the table for Watson. "He confessed with surprisingly little prompting." A disgusted upturn of the corner of his mouth betrayed his feelings on the subject as he added, "In lurid detail, I might add. As if he were proud of it. Which I imagine he is, considering the object of his crime." He scowled at the tabletop and thumped the blade of his hand on the wood. "You realize we can't keep this completely quiet, right? Not after that display in front of the men. And word is starting to circle the underground already; it seems that his crew took no pains to keep this one hushed up."

Watson pressed his lips firmly together and then elected on a long drought of the draft in front of him. The ale slid thickly down his throat, rich and dark and brewed quite near to perfection. In spite of the subject matter, Watson gave the pint an appreciative look as he set it down. "I know, Inspector. Much as it pains me."

Lestrade nodded and peered off to the side, askance. "A few of my men had to leave the room. The way he talked about it… It turned my stomach, I don't mind telling you. But we got the whole account down."

It took a moment for Watson's reaction to settle on resigned and indifferent – a long enough moment to be noticeable as such. "That is all that matters."

"Yes," Lestrade breathed, clearly in doubt as to the merits of that statement. "We put him in solitary to try to contain his…bragging."

Again, Watson needed a few extra seconds to contain his initial reactions. "Well, if he confessed, then I see no reason for your obvious displeasure."

Lestrade nodded; he had expected the observation. "Redding even happily named his accomplices. We scooped them up first thing this morning."

Watson gave a start and then had to ask, "Are you serious? But that's perfect!"

With a pointed grimace, tongue pressed to the roof of his mouth, Lestrade nodded. "_Both_ of his accomplices." Then he met Watson's eyes, awaiting a reaction.

"Both…" Watson frowned. "Which one is still missing?"

Lestrade inhaled through his nostrils, biting the inside of one lip behind his closed mouth, and shifted uneasily in his chair. "Doctor…there is no one still missing."

Watson blinked in complete ignorance. "I don't understand. You say that you have only caught three of them."

"Yes," Lestrade replied. He flared his nostrils, his expression retaining a measure of both distaste and reluctance, and then listed off, "Josiah Redding – Top Man. Dale Kirkpatrick – Left Arm Man. Smitty Williams – Right Arm Man." He stopped then, not in hesitation but more as if his vocal chords had been severed. "They all, independently, claim that there was no fourth man involved."

Watson aborted a knee-jerk exclamation of contempt, and then asserted, "Then they are lying. Obviously, they are afraid to reveal the identity of the fourth, which would make perfect sense if they were hired by this man. He probably wields power of some sort, or else he paid them enough for their involvement to cover the possibility of their being caught. There have been instances where a hired criminal is compensated well enough that they would hold to the deception even then. In fact, being caught and going on record as the sole culprits may have been the plan from the start, to close the case and save the real perpetrator from being named at all."

Lestrade waited calmly until Watson had finished, and then shook his head once, an apology and a negation rolled into one terse motion. "We also located several of their previous victims, doctor. None of them will allow a formal complaint because it would draw attention to their lifestyles – they are all practicing sodomites, you see. But they did consent to describe their assailants briefly on the condition that we would leave them out of the official investigation."

A curious sinking feeling invaded Watson's innards, wrenching knots in his esophagus somewhere midway to his navel. In a voice that sought to shake, Watson demanded, "And?"

"And they all verify that there were only three men involved." Lestrade clasped his hands around his own pint of ale and peered sadly into it. "Their descriptions match those of the men we already have in custody."

Watson shook his head, paused, and then leaned back in his chair to wave his hands between them as if to swipe away the implication that Lestrade had just laid out. "No. You have Holmes' statement – or enough of one. You know that there were four men involved, that a gentleman appeared to have hired this trio – "

"Doctor, please." Lestrade sagged back in his chair and shot Watson a doleful look. "Do you think that I have come to this conclusion lightly? There is no evidence of a fourth man. No witness to attest to his existence – the perpetrators themselves claim that he does not exist! Even upon promise of leniency, of a reduced sentence, of monetary compensation, they swear that they acted alone that night. They boast of that fact."

Watson shook his head to one side as he straightened. "So you take the words of three rapists over that of Sherlock Holmes?"

Being a police inspector, Lestrade did not react to the blunt terminology. "Not easily," he replied softly. "Think about this as he would. If this were someone else's case – "

"This is _not_ someone else's case."

Lestrade ignored the interruption. "If this were someone else, what would Mister Holmes say now?"

Watson fumed at the sense of betrayal pervading his chest at Lestrade's assertion, but at the same time, he could feel a telltale prickling in the corners of his eyes, and he clenched his jaw hard enough to elicit a subtle tremble of one lip. "He would investigate further. He would _not_ dismiss the victim. He would look for a conspiracy. You _know_ he would! Think of the sorts of cases he has taken – all the times he has taken the long shot and been _right_."

"I _have_ looked for a conspiracy, Doctor Watson." Lestrade leaned forward across the table, his elbows splayed on the wooden surface. "I want there to be a conspiracy more than you know. I canvassed the entire block searching for a witness, and I even ended up finding a few eventually. There was an unfortunate, a flower girl, who saw Redding's band leave the alley with their spoils. And an old blacksmith who holds a beggar's cup at the end of the street saw Mister Holmes run past not ten minutes after that. He had the alley in sight from where he stood, and he has a hawk's gaze. He says that he would have noticed a gentleman of Fourth Man's finery because those sorts, walking through the slum of that neighborhood, always toss a coin his way. But no one saw a gentleman all night. _No one_. There is no other way out of that alley, Doctor. There are no doors into the buildings flanking it, no ladders or fire escapes, no back outlet. It is a dead end. And no one saw a gentleman leave it that night."

"You're wrong." Watson set his mouth into a grim line and furiously shook his head. "You are wrong, Inspector. Just because no one else saw him, it does not mean he does not exist. You are playing directly into whatever conspiracy they are trying to build."

"Have some sense, Doctor."

"No. I reject your theory."

"I am not telling you this because I am glad of it," Lestrade snapped. "But the _facts_ cannot be argued against. I have no cause to believe that those three are lying. Their stories match. There are no inconsistencies – "

"Considering the amount of time you have spent dawdling about on this case, I am not surprised that they were able to synchronize their lies."

Lestrade drew a forceful breath through his nose to reign in the flare of temper that Watson could see simmering in his irises. "Where is the evidence, Doctor? The _facts_, the data? I am using Mister Holmes' own methods."

"Then you are doing a piss poor job of it."

Another deep breath signified Lestrade's efforts to remain calm and avoid making a scene in public. "Doctor Watson, I have looked at every angle of this case. I have not slept all night for agonizing over what this means. But I cannot deny what is laid out in front of me. There was no Fourth Man, Doctor Watson."

"But Holmes described him – he rendered a likeness for Clarkie – "

"Do you know what that description was, Doctor?" Lestrade demanded. "Mister Holmes told Clarke that Fourth Man kept himself hidden in shadow. He could not give us the color of his hair, the tint of his complexion, the shape of his face, the scent of an aftershave… This is Mister Holmes; what are the odds that he would have _nothing_ to tell us?"

"It was dark," Watson growled, "and he was being _attacked_, for god's sake!"

"We also found no footprints that could have belonged to a man sitting on a crate against the wall."

"The lack of footprints alone accounts for nothing!" Watson seethed. "The crime scene was probably well enough trampled or rained upon or otherwise corrupted by the time you got to it." But he could recall Holmes saying that the night of the attack – that he could not accurately describe Fourth Man on account of the darkness. And such a statement had not jived then either; Holmes always noticed _something_.

Lestrade glanced down in silent apology, and then remarked, "I can see from your face that you have doubts of your own."

Watson glared at the half-full pint in front of him and then pushed his chair back. Without so much as giving Lestrade a dirty look, he snarled, "I will not be a party to making a mockery of my friend after he has endured such a trying experience. He did not imagine it, Lestrade."

"I know." Lestrade glanced around and made a shushing motion that doubled as plea for him to resume his seat. "The attack was real. The injuries are real."

"Then why do you seek to discredit him?"

Lestrade shook his head and appeared on the verge of breaking some poorly held façade of his composure. "I don't seek that, Doctor. I would never seek that. But I saw him that morning; he was not himself – not even close. For god's sake, he was convinced that we would arrest _him_ just for being a victim! It is not inconceivable to think that for some reason, his mind invented the spectator gentleman, perhaps because the hint of conspiracy lent the incident meaning. Perhaps because if there was a reason, a real and logical reason for the attack, a mystery to focus on, then he could maintain his sanity long enough to get home. It is not a reflection on his character that he would need that to survive."

Watson licked his lips, a task made difficult by the tense line of his mouth. Then he hissed, "Sod your damn theories, Lestrade. And stay the hell away from Holmes; I will not have him subjected to such ludicrous, _insulting_ drivel. If you do not believe him, then he does not need you. And in that case, you are not welcome at Baker Street anymore."

Lestrade tried to stop him from storming out, but he could hardly grab Watson's arm and drag him back with an audience of off-duty Yard men and various locals crowding around. As it was, Watson made it out unmolested and stalked several blocks, driven by rage and betrayal and stark terror. When he made it halfway to Baker Street, he had to stop and duck into an alley to catch his breath, leaning against the brick façade of a telegram office, his arm shaking where it braced his weight on his cane. He found himself covering his mouth to hold back some nonspecific sound that tickled and threatened to breach the back of his throat. There had to be a Fourth Man. Holmes _saw_ a Fourth Man. He could not have imagined him. It simply wasn't possible.

Watson shut his eyes and apportioned more of his weight to the building at his back. There was no evidence. Holmes attributed no marks on his body to Fourth Man, the silent spectator. The one who lingered unnoticed after the other three left. Who, by the bare account that Holmes had given, did not actually touch him at all other than to rifle his pockets. Who no one had seen leaving the alley, who Holmes could not even describe beyond the observation that he had worn fine clothes. Redding and his men were habitual offenders who targeted inverts wandering their bit of London alone at night. Holmes did occasionally look a bit like a toff, jaunty and flamboyant, wearing his clothes loose and open. He was fair skinned and smooth, lithe in form on account of his thinness, which leant him subtle curves of figure perhaps more suited to a woman or a nancy boy. He would have been their ideal sort of mark – Holmes fit their profile to a tee.

As for knowing who he was, for targeting him, it would have been easy for them to find out his real name; more people than Holmes realized were probably well aware of his identity. Look at Thomas. And Holmes said that they had lost bets against him, that they were angry over it. The only reason to think that there were motives other than revenge was Fourth Man's presence – he threw every theory out of alignment. But if there was no Fourth Man, there was no mystery – no inconsistency to be explained and resolved. The crime became petty – revenge and humiliation, and the satisfaction of perverse desires. It became simple. And there was no actual, _physical_ evidence that the crime was other than horribly, appallingly simple.

"Holmes did not imagine him," Watson whispered to himself, the words held safe behind his hand where his breath was permitted to tremble just a little bit. "He would not have imagined him." He could hear the lack of conviction in his own tenuous words. Holmes had been so disoriented that night when he got home, so scared and small and…broken – going on about rent money and Watson's ruined shirt – counting buttons, but apparently not Fourth Man's buttons, as if Fourth Man were an add on to his memory of the event, something that occurred after he counted everyone else's buttons, an accidental inconsistency that he had realized on the sitting room floor and sought in a fit of distraction to rectify. And it had to be thought suspicious that England's most observant man could not even recall the color of Fourth Man's hair…whether he had worn a hat, whether or not he had boasted a mustache or a beard or used a scented soap or aftershave…nothing save the descriptor of his clothes as being richer than the others'.

Watson shook himself harshly and pushed away from the bricks at his back. He could not believe Holmes capable of losing so much of his composure that he could invent a perpetrator. If there was no evidence, then Watson would find some. For Holmes' sake, he would prove that Fourth Man existed because the alternative did not bear contemplation. Watson scrubbed his handkerchief over his face and then tucked it into his sleeve, neglecting to fold it as neatly as he normally would have done. As he limped back out onto the sidewalk, he entertained vague notions of how to go about his task, and even as plans formed halfway to fruition in him mind, he could not shake the impression that he was hunting a figment, and he imagined the he might spend his life in pursuit of a man who he knew full well could never be found. And if that were the case, then so be it; he would chase figments until the ground took him, because if Sherlock Holmes said that there were four men involved, then there were most certainly four men to be found.

Why, then, could Watson not shake the aura of hopelessness that clouded his convictions? And for that matter, why did he feel such desperation to find even a shred of evidence to render Holmes' account of the crime true? As if finding that evidence denoted a line of survival for both of them, that he should be so terrified that there may be no evidence to find? That there never had been evidence to find?

* * *

Watson arrived home to the sound of a nocturne played with heartrending, skillful abandon on a violin. He had barely stepped through the door before he had to stop and listen to it more closely, which led to his notice of Mrs Hudson hovering in the kitchen doorway. Her ear was also cocked to the muted filigree of sound that wafted down the seventeen stairs. Holmes had a bad habit of torturing his Stradivarius, but when he actually paused in his reckless, obsessive drives to play it correctly, he often ended up torturing his listeners instead. And not because he played poorly. On the contrary, Holmes – the aloof, dignified, sloppy and arrogant man with a self-professed lack of need for his own humanity – could rend bow to catgut the way other men died of solitude.

"Now, I know that look," Mrs Hudson drawled, her voice seeming to weave through the strain of music. "Care to tell me what's got you so bothered that you didn't even use the umbrella you're carrying?"

Watson blinked first at her, then to the window beside the front door where streaks of rain ran in rivulets down the glass. Finally, he confirmed that his umbrella was indeed in his hand, unopened. "I seem to have tracked water all over your rug."

Mrs Hudson took the nonsequitor as the polite rebuff that Watson had intended, and inquired no further as to the source of his distraction. "Well, there's little enough harm done. Why don't you give that here and go put on something dry." She gestured for his great coat, and Watson obediently fumbled it off. "I'll just hang this by the kitchen fire and then fix you a nice hot pot of tea."

"Thank you, Mrs Hudson." Watson shook out his shoes as well – a pointless endeavor as he had not worn his rubbers that morning, and his socks were practically swimming beneath his laces. He sighed and merely tromped up the stairs, shoes squelching on every step, his hair dripping in strings over his ears and forehead.

As he passed the sitting room door, the violin wailed into an unnatural suspension of a single note, and then the instrument fell silent. "Watson?"

"Yes, Holmes." Watson leaned on the banister as he rounded it to the next flight. "I'll be down shortly."

Through the closed door, Holmes observed, "You are soaking wet."

"How very clever of you to notice," Watson quipped. Things had been marginally better since their mutual breakdown the night of Redding's arrest. He felt more able to risk some of their old friendly banter than he had in over a month, and that was a decided sign of improvement in his book.

"Why did you not use your umbrella?"

Watson did not pause on the stairs, but the ache in his leg assured that his pace had slowed considerably. "You assume I had it with me?"

"It is missing from the rack."

Of course it was.

"You obviously failed to open it."

"How do you know I was not simply splashed by an inconsiderate omnibus driver?"

"Because that would have left you muddy as well as wet, and Mrs Hudson is not screeching that you have ruined her carpeting."

Watson chuffed softly and discovered a grin forming on his face. He did not bother challenging Holmes' logic. "I'm going to change into something a bit less apt to leave me with a spring chill."

"A wise precaution." Holmes spared the time to check the tuning of his violin strings, and then he broke into some sort of gypsy waltz.

By the time Watson emerged in fresh clothing and his dressing gown, Holmes had moved on to Saint-Saëns' _Danse Macabre__. _Watson had not heard him retune his violin to accommodate the scordatura, but he rarely did; Holmes could make the keying of a string seem like part of an embellished song transition. The tea service had already been delivered and sat beckoning him from the sideboard, but Watson paused in the doorway to absorb the familiar sight of his friend wandering around with his violin tucked under his chin – a harbinger of home, if ever there was one. Then his eyes caught the total disarray of Holmes' desk. His crime scrapbooks were scattered all over it, spilling over onto his chair and on in haphazard rows and columns to cover the surface of his chemical table. Most of them were open to certain articles, and all of them contained several bookmarks to additional articles.

Watson sidled up to the chemical table and glanced over Holmes' shorthand scribbled across the margins beside some of the newspaper cuttings, his head tilted to one side. "Holmes. Are you working on something?"

Without breaking either his stride or the rhythm of the song, Holmes replied, "Is that not obvious?"

Watson hardly dared to hope, but he could not keep the brightness from his voice when he inquired, "Is it for a case?"

Holmes replied with a quick, furtive wink as he spun away through the room, still coaxing complicated stanzas from his bow and fingertips.

"Ha!" Watson quelled the urge to bounce on his toes in a most ungentlemanly fashion, but his excitement would not be dampened. "Are you going to tell me about it, or do I have to guess?"

"Deduce, Watson; _deduce_," Holmes chided over the music. "We never guess."

For no good reason, Watson frowned at Holmes' exuberance. A return to good-natured jibes was exactly what Watson had been longing for, but to see it happening set him on edge. It felt wrong somehow. "Holmes, is everything alright?"

"Never better." Holmes paused at the mantle with his violin pinioned between chin and shoulder, his fingers snaking down to a tuner even as he continued bowing. "By the by, why were you so intent on subjecting yourself to a downpour?" The strings thus adjusted, Holmes tripped off in a new direction.

This time, Watson saw the false cheer for the mania that it was. He sighed in disappointment, but he could hardly claim that it came as a shock. A cursory scan of the surrounding clutter yielded Holmes' Morocco case open on the floor, a freshly used needle discarded carelessly beside it atop the swirl of a silk cravat that Holmes had probably used as a tourniquet. He padded across the room and crouched before the damning evidence without touching it.

A second later, the violin fell ominously silent. The clatter of bow to wooden body indicated that Holmes had transferred both objects to one hand, and then uneven footsteps came to rest just opposite the chair to Watson's left. "I beg you, Watson…do not be too terribly cross with me."

"I am not angry, Holmes." And for once, he truly was not. His fingers extended of their own accord to caress the length of the needle, and the tip of one finger came back stained with a tiny smear of Holmes' blood. "I only wish that you didn't believe you need this so badly."

"I do need it," Holmes countered sharply. "It is clarifying, Watson. I have told you – "

"I recall what you have told me," Watson interrupted calmly. "I simply beg to differ."

Holmes huffed and then retreated in a flurry of angry footsteps, his mood made more changeable under the influence of the cocaine – more apt to fits of pique. "You are being unreasonable."

"I am speaking from medical experience, Holmes." Watson pushed himself upright and dusted his knees off.

From the other side of the room, Holmes retorted, "That is rich, Watson, coming from someone who has never tried it. Your text books are not accurate representations of a lot of things, _this _included."

Watson nodded, but not in concession. "I will not argue with you while that poison is influencing your mind."

Holmes subsided, but only after a childish snort of resentment. Watson watched him pick up a cloth and begin to scrub at the rosin stains dusted in pale clouds around the bridge of his violin. "And where have you been all afternoon?"

"Having a drink with Lestrade." Watson picked his way around yet more scrapbooks laid out in a line on the floor, and then gingerly lowered himself into his chair by the fireplace. His leg ached with the chill of his walk in the rain and he regretted his sojourn both for that, and for the distasteful conversation he had bourn on account of it.

Several minutes passed in deceptive silence, and then Holmes appeared in Watson's periphery. "Here." He held out a towel. "For your leg."

Watson accepted the offering with a faint smile at the singed edges; Holmes had evidently warmed it for him by holding it over a bunsen burner.

"You should know better than to go out in this weather," Holmes rebuked. His concern poked tiny holes in his lingering petulance over Watson's comments on the cocaine.

It was probably cruel and definitely unfair of Watson to do so, but he glanced covertly at Holmes' retreating back and remarked, "You do realize that your dependence on the needle is one of the things that most grieves me about living here."

Holmes froze with his hand poised to pick up his violin and then slowly straightened.

"It puts you in the most disagreeable moods."

Holmes threw a hooded glance over his shoulder and then turned his back again. From the movements of his shoulders and his right arm, Watson could tell that he was picking his lip in thought. As if he regretted the words prior to saying them, Holmes asked, "How so?"

"Your temper, for one," Watson offered, endeavoring to be kind even as he did so. "And after that, the cruelty you display toward me." It gratified him to see Holmes flinch. "Perhaps you don't realize how it prompts you to say the most hurtful things in defense of it, Holmes. You lash out at me, insult my writing, my medical skills…my character and intentions. Anything to drive me from the room so that you no longer have to deal with my disapproval of it."

Holmes fussed in place and then apparently elected to ignore him. A second later, he had recovered his violin, but his cleaning of it took on an angry edge; his self imposed moratorium on speaking ended soon after. "If you do not wish to see it or deal with me when I take it, then you are of course perfectly able to go elsewhere until my company is suitable again."

"It is not your company I object to, Holmes. It is the detrimental effect that the drug has on you. Your mind is a great thing – too great to waste on a passing fix. Do you truly think that it is not corrupting you as surely as drink would an alcoholic?"

Holmes glared at him past the fingerboard of the Stradivarius and then took to ignoring him altogether.

Watson expelled a silent sigh and arranged the hot towel over the aching muscles of his thigh. If Holmes did not wish to consider his opinion, then Watson could not force him to. And what else was new about that?

Nearly ten minutes passed before Holmes ventured to speak again, his voice surly and put off but still curious. "What did Lestrade have to say over drinks to so upset you?"

Suddenly, Watson wished that they could continue arguing pointlessly over Holmes' cocaine use. "It hardly matters," Watson mumbled. He leaned back in his chair and squirmed in a vain effort to find a position that would leave both his leg and his shoulder in a modicum of comfort. "You know how thick he is when he thinks he's got a case solved."

Holmes' frown was evident in his voice when he said, "You went to see Lestrade about a case?"

Watson had already closed his eyes in an effort to relax, but he took the trouble of quirking an eyebrow as he retorted, "Now who's being thick?"

"It was my case, wasn't it."

Watson gave a noncommittal grunt. "It's been four days. I wanted to know what they'd discovered from Redding."

A loaded pause, and then Holmes hesitantly prodded, "And?"

And now they come to it, Watson thought to himself. The investigation had been concluded. He was certain that Holmes would see through the deflection when he simply replied, "Lestrade has deemed the case closed. Redding confessed and gave up the names of his accomplices. They will be sentences shortly; they aren't denying anything."

"Oh."

Watson peeled his eyes open and then twisted to see past the back of his chair. Holmes had sat down in front of his open violin case, wringing the rosin cloth between his hands. "Are you alright, old boy?"

"Fine," Holmes clipped out.

"Can I get you anything? A drink?"

Holmes sucked his lips in between his teeth and lifted his head to glare at the items laid out on the table before him. He seemed to debate saying whatever truly lingered on his mind, but the need to have it out prevailed. "I want to see them."

Watson could actually feel himself pale. "I'm not sure that's a good idea."

"You seem to be laboring under the impression that I was asking your permission."

"Holmes… As your doctor, I think it would be better to simply put it out of mind."

Holmes' very posture grew suspicious, and he gripped the edge of the table as he swiveled to sit sideways in his chair. "My method of putting things out of mind has been a point of contention ever since we met."

Watson indulged in a glare. "There are dozens of methods of doing so that do _not _entail borderline poisoning yourself."

"And none of them are effective for me," Holmes rebutted. The furrows between his eyes deepened. "What are you hiding?"

Watson balked, which was as good as admitting that he was being dishonest in any one of a hundred manners. "I'm not hiding anything."

"How many lies are you going to present me with before this conversation reaches its natural conclusion?" Natural, of course, being Holmes proving himself right.

Watson decisively shut his mouth, but Holmes had scented him out already. He had to offer at least a grain of truth, so he blurted out, "They confessed."

Holmes' face crinkled in confusion because he could see that Watson had not lied by that statement, and yet it did not clear anything up.

"To everything," Watson added. "In detail."

That did it; Holmes' face went slack, and then he spun away to face his discarded violin again. "How much detail?"

Watson swallowed and hated himself for doing this – for saying such things – but this truth was far safer than the other. "Enough to make several officers ill, and to justify putting put Redding in solitary to censor him."

Holmes shifted himself in several different directions where he sat.

"It's not worth prolonging the affair," Watson pressed. "Just let it be; they're behind bars. Isn't that good enough?"

Holmes hunched down a bit and studied his hands where they sat restlessly in his lap; it could have been agitation or simply an effect of the cocaine that made his fingers twitch. "What are their names?"

Watson fumbled his own tongue up behind his teeth, and then stammered, "What?"

"Their names," Holmes repeated, louder and with better diction this time. "I want to know who they are."

Watson blinked a few times in rapid succession, and then asked, "Does it really matter? They've been caught out."

Holmes threw his shoulders back, but a moment later, his posture lost definition. He fingered the violin bow and then blew out a defeated sigh. "I suppose not." He slumped further in the chair and lowered his voice even farther. "Did they say why they did it?"

"They're habitual offenders," Watson hedged. "And they had lost a large sum of money on you." Not a lie, really; simply a misdirection.

Holmes seemed to consider this explanation, and then he glanced over at Watson with a doleful look. "That's all?"

The way Holmes asked, all but begging for some other, less trivial purpose, nearly shattered Watson's resolve. It also bolstered his private determination to find the real reason for it, and to prove Fourth Man's existence in the process. He couldn't lie, though; not to Holmes' face, not about this. So he merely gazed steadily back and waited for Holmes to break eye contact first.

It wasn't long in coming. Holmes sat in perfect stillness for nearly a minute after he turned away, and then he flung himself to his feet and all but wrecked his way across the room. "I have been looking into a string of jewel thefts." He flipped through one of his scrapbooks and pointed at an article even though Watson had not moved from his chair. "They show an evolution of technique over several years' time and then cease altogether approximately a year ago. None of the jewels were ever recovered, but I cannot believe that the crew is finished; they were too successful to simply break off their venture. That, and no one else seems to have drawn the connections between any of the thefts."

Watson pretended to find Holmes' assertions fascinating, but he was too busy cursing himself for a coward and a liar to mark much of what Holmes said after that.

-tbc


	7. Chapter 7

_"Come now, precious. Such a pretty little thing, you are."_

Holmes opened his eyes and stared sightlessly at the pattern of shadows on the ceiling above him. Awake now, he told himself. Home and safe - much safer than before, in fact.

He had spent the majority of the day on edge for no other reason than that he knew exactly where those men were now. It should have been a relief, and yet if anything, his stomach had roiled even more violently at the odor of food than was his usual wont, and he had broken the A string on his violin from plucking it so hard. And this, now, was the third rude awakening so far that his mind had gifted him with since Watson had finally convinced him to retire, and it wore on him. At least the dreams were all mild, just foggy collections of sounds and vague snatches of phrases uttered by an amorphous series of shadows. Tame. He could deal with tame, except that it kept consistently waking him up. Probably a lingering effect of his earlier indulgence with the needle. Well…cocaine to wake, morphine to sleep. Just like university. Watson would not approve, but Holmes did not intend for him to find out.

Beside him, Watson's even breaths shuttled air into the pillow, sloughing in the darkness. Holmes turned his head in the direction of the dip in the bed beside him. Even in the dying shadows cast by the red embers in the fireplace, Holmes could make out the smudge of the fading bruise that he had inflicted on Watson in the sitting room, a brush of mottled gray on his jaw, easily visible now that the long years had finally stolen the tawny cast that Afghanistan had left on his skin. Careful not to jostle the bed, Holmes rolled toward him and gently moved Watson's left arm into a position unlikely to leave his shoulder aching by morning.

Watson mumbled an incoherent sigh of nonsense and consternation, then fell quiet again. Holmes wondered if he knew just how often Holmes had lain awake since Reichenbach, guarding his sleep. No doubt, he would consider it sordid. Holmes spent a long moment wondering if he had really meant it when he had told Watson that he only left to hurt him. In truth, he had been running from Moran, but Holmes could remember thinking even then that it would serve Watson right if he simply dropped out of Watson's life the way that Watson had dropped out of his. And it made him feel like a cad for even entertaining that notion, much less for following through with it. Even Mycroft had questioned Holmes' decision to let Watson keep on grieving for him as if he were truly dead.

A poor imitation of an owl's call floated through the glass panes of the window, and Holmes glanced out at his part of London. His Irregulars were changing the guard. Holmes did not have the heart to tell them to call off the vigil, and he doubted that the boys would consent even if he did. They took some odd brand of pride in watching him and following him, deluding themselves into believing that their attention made a difference to him. But then again, in some small and pathetic way, perhaps it did. Holmes scowled to himself in the dark when he realized the truth to that. Pathetic, relying on a cadre of star-struck unfortunates for his peace of mind.

It took but a moment to retrieve his Morocco case and to locate a phial of morphine hidden in the locked drawer of his desk. Watson's checkbook covered it, and the irony appealed to Holmes in an almost sadistic manner. He tied his arm off with a suspender strap that lay discarded under his chemical table – probably one of his own, since Watson did tend to clean up after himself – and then paused to crane his neck up over the arm of the chair that he was crouched behind. Sneaking about in his own home, hiding on the floor of his own sitting room… One would think that his intended actions were criminal. Holmes glowered at the encompassing darkness, but he had heard all he needed – Watson continued to breathe evenly in his slumber.

Holmes drew up a rather sloppily measured dose in the inadequate light that filtered in from the street, past half-drawn curtains. He had to feel for a vein due to the poor illumination, and then he cursed under his breath to discover his hand shaking as he tried to pierce it with the needle. A small sound of frustration leaked past his tightly pressed lips, and then the needle finally slid home. He exhaled in sheer relief at the sting of it, well aware of how it might look to a bystander – like an addict crouching on the floor in the dark…_needed a fix real bad…shameful, really_.

Several seconds passed in mortified stillness, and then Holmes looked down at the cast of shadows covering his own arm. As much in defiance as to banish the remembered taunting, Holmes drew the plunger up slightly. He could feel the pull on his vein, and in his mind's eye, he pictured the delicate threads of red that must be swirling about in the clear solution. Then he sucked a breath in through his teeth and began injecting the morphine. The chill spread into his arm and Holmes let his head drop back, eyes closed against the shadowed ceiling as his thumb continued pressing the plunger. The last of the contents of the needle trickled into his vein and Holmes opened his eyes as he bowed over his arm, the needle still in place as a dull rush infiltrated his body and spread outward – the numbing pressure of euphoria. Holmes heard himself breathing hard in the silence, his body shivering in the wake of the drug, and then he groaned softly as the relief finally hit, arching his back just slightly as the first wave crested in a splash of chemical calm.

It passed quickly and Holmes blinked several times, not quite overcome by the initial swirl of dizziness. It took an effort to withdraw the needle in light of the sublime tranquility settling over him like clouds. He tossed his paraphernalia back into the desk drawer but couldn't find his keys to relock it. No matter. If he did not return to bed soon, he would end up sleeping out here, probably on the floor, and he really did not want to wake up stiff and sore in the morning with Watson's slippered foot prodding him in the ribs.

A hansom clattered past a few streets over as Holmes curled himself back under the blankets and extended a hand to brush over Watson's arm. He did not particularly care to dream again, but before he could muster the energy to be concerned at the remembrance that morphine often heightened the vividness of dreams, the drug had already dragged him down.

_Fourth Man rose from his perch on the packing crate as the others moved away, righting clothes and replacing belts. Top Man was boasting; Holmes could not make out the words past the ringing of blood in his ears and the rush of air as he struggled to fill his lungs with tatters of inexplicably thin air, but the tone of his voice gave it away. They were squabbling by the time they reached the street, and then distance carried them beyond Holmes' ability to distinguish them from a hundred other noises. He didn't even have it in him to be relieved at their leaving. _

_"Ah, Mister Holmes. How the mighty have fallen."_

_Holmes tensed and curled as far into himself as he could with his wrists still bound behind him and his whole body aching at the strain of just existing. He shuddered and then on a whim, he licked the dirt off the cobblestone that his cheek had been resting on because at least the ground didn't taste of rot and male issue. His tongue snagged on the scratchy stone but he kept at it like a cat to cream._

_"Well. I have to say, I am rather impressed," Fourth Man told him. He could have sweetened tea with that voice. "You bore that with quite a bit of composure."_

_Holmes pressed his nose into a crack in the cobblestones and wearily closed his eyes as Fourth Man knelt over him, straddling his legs. Fine; one more to satisfy. He could do that – it was only another drop in the bucket. And afterwards, he could go home to Watson. Just go home to Watson – Watson with his sea novel and his ruffled mustache, the skin of his cheek creased from dropping off with his head canted onto his own shoulder, telling Holmes off for staying out so late when he had promised to be back before midnight. A quaver of the voice dancing around the edges of each word, so that Holmes could tell that Watson was not truly angry but merely terrified that he would go away again, perhaps forever this time._

_Soft, manicured hands smoothed up Holmes' thigh and rubbed gently at his hip. Holmes started violently and tried to twist his shoulders as if he could have wedged himself far enough into the cracks in the ground to be out of reach. He could have handled insults or violence, another invasion upon his person, but not this; it felt too much like kindness assaulting his already frayed nerves. He could feel his muscles relaxing, lulled into a false state of calm by conflicting sensory input that played on the soul-sick exhaustion suffusing his entire frame. _

_"Mm…they're wrong, you know. Pale and soft, yes, but nothing like a woman." Fourth Man's hand came to rest against the ground, right in Holmes' line of vision. "No, sir. You are very much a man." He insinuated a hand between Holmes cheek and the ground and forced his head up. "Smooth, hard lines…the feral scent of sweat and fear and masculinity…cowed and used, and yet utterly breathtaking." Fourth Man kissed him, but not the way Top Man had. He feathered his lips over the bruises marking Holmes' jaw, grazing teeth over his cheek, oh so gentle. Wiped moisture from his face with one immaculately clean thumb and then nosed at his hairline, smelling him and making contented little cat-like sounds deep in his throat – the kinds of noises that normal men only bestowed upon a lover. Murmured endearments and soft, whispery ghosts of moans. Worship. A sick parody of worship._

_Holmes didn't resist, but only because he couldn't think how to thwart something so soothing. Fourth Man's touch was so different from the others', and Holmes was so tired, and he hurt everywhere. Fourth Man crooned quiet things to him, wordless things and Holmes shut his eyes, too nearly defeated to care what he was saying, only that it was calm and peaceful in the wake of force and jeers and what must have been over an hour of constant, vain struggling. When Fourth Man rubbed circles over his belly, all Holmes could do was shift in mild protest, and that only because the dregs of his pride demanded some form of resistance. He didn't even notice when Fourth Man touched lower, but he did whine at the flash of pain that the contact engendered. Top Man had not been gentle with him, squeezing and pulling with too much force just to watch him wince. It took Holmes a moment to realize that he was still hard, that Top Man had managed to keep him hard the whole time and that it had not abated, and then he hissed and tried to curl more tightly around himself. _

_"Shhh…there now. That can't be comfortable." Fourth Man kneaded him gently. "Don't worry; I'll take care of it for you."_

_Fourth Man's hand moved too firmly over too-sensitive skin, rubbing and pressing Holmes' erection against his stomach so that he could stroke the underside of it. Pressure along flesh, a thumb at the head to dig in, and it really hurt – he was sore, too sore for this, and yet his body responded – Holmes could feel it, muscles contracting here and there, stomach tightening…. When Holmes moaned, it was half pain and half dejected humiliation. Fourth Man worked him slowly in one hand, his other running in soothing arcs over Holmes' body, his ribs, his shoulders, his thighs. It was all Holmes could do just to lay there and take it. He was too tired to fight, and it…it felt nice. Compared to the others, anyway, it felt almost like relief. _

_Holmes heard himself breathing, ragged and shallow, and he squirmed as Fourth Man closed his fingers to fist him gently. The grit rubbed painfully over his length and he whimpered a wordless protest. He suspected that his most sensitive places had been chafed nearly raw against the ground and in Top Man's rough, dry hands. Dear god…would he develop a rash from it? Not just from the dryness but from the disease that must have been crawling all over this alley and on those…those men themselves. Holmes twitched in a direction vaguely away from Fourth Man's hand, but other parts of his body betrayed him yet again._

_"So beautiful," Fourth Man whispered. He leaned down to kiss Holmes' shoulder, lips light and reverent. While he was down there, he snaked his left arm under Holmes' body and splayed his hand over Holmes' chest. What resulted was a sort of embrace. _

_Holmes struggled, but so weakly that he would have done better not to bother. His restless shifting offered a beneficial resistance to Fourth Man, who wrapped himself around Holmes on the ground, held him as if they were lovers and braced him as Holmes unraveled quite without realizing what the hell was going on. All Holmes knew was that he felt light-headed, and then billows of heat rushed through him in a broken series of rapidly intensifying waves like clouds of heat in a burning room, or the shape of an explosion under water. He broke out in a sudden sweat and arched with a feeble whimper, muscles burning from the strain, pushing back into Fourth Man's arms without meaning to. _

_A tremble rose from Holmes' limbs, curled his toes and tightened into a writhing ball in his stomach while Fourth Man held him close and spewed comforting nonsense into his ear. Holmes opened his mouth but no sound came out. He did not convulse so much as tense up for a few seconds, and something was very wrong but he was too dazed to pinpoint what. He gasped then – he could hear it as if from afar, as if he weren't a part of his own voice anymore – a sheer and pitched inhalation like shards of glass scraping together. When the pressure condensed at the base of his spine to steal the remaining air from his lungs, he curled up until his forehead struck the ground. One of his feet scrabbled mindlessly against one of Fourth Man's legs. A wheeze filtered past his constricted throat and he clenched his teeth, tongue pressed to the roof of his mouth, head flung back. God, no, he thought with grotesque clarity. The heat blossomed in rippling waves through his groin and he gasped out a mangled plea to stop as he finally understood what was happening. _

_"It's alright, Holmes," Fourth Man whispered. "I've got you." And it sounded like honest, tortured affection, but he didn't want that from this man, he didn't. _

_Holmes twisted to hide his face as the aftershocks sparked through him, twitching his limbs as they passed. He cried then – loud, gut-wrenching sobs, the kind he had refused to give vent to throughout the entire rest of the ordeal. He gave up caring who saw it, listening to his own heart pulse to _that_ beat, and smelling himself as he spent into Fourth Man's hand, warmth pooling low in his stomach to linger while Fourth Man cupped his softening member and whispered things to him that Holmes had only ever wanted to hear from someone like Watson. Because they weren't mumblings of a sexual nature; Fourth Man poured out praise for Holmes' deductive abilities, his stamina, his prowess in the boxing ring, his loyalty to his clients, his cleverness… _

_He even said that he was proud of Holmes – proud of him for making it all the way through. And he called Holmes "dear boy" the way Watson did sometimes in unguarded moments. "There now, dear boy. It's all over now." As if Holmes should be grateful to Fourth Man for stealing that last, tiny spec of his shattered dignity by making him come, just to put an end to it – as if it were a favor, finding him an end to it. And maybe it was; it almost felt like it should be. This warm haze that followed was supposed to be lazy and pleasurable, wasn't it? Watson said once that lying in bed with Mary after their marital exertions had been some of his favorite times with her. But this wasn't like that, was it? God, why didn't it hurt? His own body had just turned on him in the most humiliating way, and that should hurt – someone make it hurt! _

_Fourth Man sat up eventually, disentangling himself from Holmes' limp body. Holmes shut his eyes and shook when he heard Fourth Man opening his flies, just a few catches of fabric. He whimpered softly into the ground as Fourth Man straddled him and began to pump himself. All Holmes could think was that Fourth Man hadn't cleaned off his hand first – he was easing his own way with Holmes' issue. Holmes didn't look but he could hear it, a nauseating squelch and pull of flesh and that singular pattern of breathy grunts that signified a man finding his pleasure. When the hot spatters dripped onto his back, Holmes shrieked; he didn't know why, since it was hardly the worst thing that had happened to him that night. _

_A hand clamped over his mouth to muffle him as he kept on screaming, and he struggled too late to do himself any good, too exhausted to have any effect. Fourth Man held him down and Holmes didn't have strength enough to throw him off. He kicked the ground, harmless blows because the angle he was lying at prevented him from landing a solid hit, like a recalcitrant child throwing a tantrum. And then he did throw up. Finally. All over the ground in front of himself, sick from his own frantic and mindless exertions. Fourth Man barely got his hand out of the way in time to avoid soiling himself. The retching stole Holmes' voice and afterwards; all he could manage was to continue gulping air into his heaving chest, wishing he could pass out so that he wouldn't have anything else for his too-sharp mind to remember in abhorrent detail._

_Fourth Man chuckled as if Holmes' complete deterioration were the most endearing thing that he had ever seen. He stood up long enough to set himself to rights, cleaned their mingled release from his fingers with that handkerchief he had flaunted earlier, and then he reached down to caress Holmes' hair. Holmes flinched and tried to slither along the ground away from him, but to no avail. He couldn't see past a flood of liquid in his eyes and his throat hurt, raw and worn from screaming and stomach acid, hoarse and useless. He had no energy left. None, not even to fight when Fourth Man forced a handkerchief past his teeth – the one he had just cleaned himself with, which Holmes only identified by the almost chemical taste of briny male issue – a taste he would not have recognized an hour ago. _

_Holmes let Fourth Man tie the cravat around his head again, gagging him, and then he cried quietly while Fourth Man set about fixing his clothes. Watson's shirt settled back up around his shoulders and Holmes shut his eyes over the sight of Fourth Man doing up the buttons. Then his trousers were eased back up over his hips, braces secured, waistcoat set to rights, frock coat folded and placed on the ground before him. Holmes cringed at his own complacency, silently begging the bare, filthy street to swallow him because he enjoyed the kindness of the act – he craved the gentleness of it and it disgusted him. Even the hands binding his ankles with his own belt were considerate and gentle, and Fourth Man shushed him and patted his hip when he squirmed and made a pained sound at the chafing of fabric over sensitive skin worn raw and bleeding._

_"I know, Mister Holmes. But I can't have you trying to follow me," Fourth Man explained. "Someone will find you by morning, I imagine. Unless you free yourself before then."_

_Holmes mewled and tried to still, if only because moving hurt. The man was clearly an idiot; surely he could see that even if he left Holmes lying there unbound, he was in no frame of body to follow. He sniffed as hard as he could in the hopes of clearing his clogged nose to breathe more freely; it did not work, so he rubbed his cheek over the ground instead and imagined in a fit of momentary insanity, perhaps, that it was Watson's hand, and that he was wiping the grime away. He felt his eyes drift shut over the thought and pictured Watson waiting at home in front of the fire. Don't leave a body. Don't make him bury another body. Watson was still waiting for him. Years dead, and still waiting for him. Have to go back. Distract him with Catullus and cast aside the bookseller. He'll be so happy. Unless he faints again, poor chap._

_"Here," Fourth Man murmured, and Holmes' eyes snapped open, jolted from the refuge of his own mind. Funny, he mused; his own mind was hardly a place for refuge on normal days. _

_Fourth Man crouched down and waved a handful of pound notes in front of Holmes' face before tucking them into his waistcoat pocket, just as he had done to Top Man with the watch. Holmes shied and made an indeterminate sound, to no avail, his limbs tense as he strained at the bindings. He knew that it was Watson's money – he had observed the bookie's mark on the corner of the note that Holmes had used to place the initial wager. Holmes looked up, scared and confused and not entirely certain what was going on anymore; he must have passed out. Or been concussed. Maybe he was still at the Punch Bowl, hallucinating in his bare rented flat above the ring; it would not have been the first time he had experienced a negative reaction to one of his chemicals. _

_Fourth Man quirked a smile, as if he knew what Holmes was thinking, and Holmes could see by that expression that this was very much real. It crystallized right there in the darkness, a grotesque and arid truth. "I am an honest man, Mister Holmes." He patted Holmes' ribs, right over the pocket he had put the money in. "You have to pay a whore."_

The acrid taste of vomit hit Holmes first, and he nearly gagged. He was surrounded by fluff and blankets and the scent of Watson, but it took him a few seconds to realize that he was at home. The solid warmth behind him was only Watson, sitting up in bed and all but cradling him as he repeated, over and over again, that it was alright, dear boy, and that he was there, and had him. The subtle rocking reached Holmes senses a moment later, and then he blinked to find that he had thrown up all over the bedclothes, not to mention himself. And Watson was crying; his grief was dignified and understated, much like the man himself, but definitely there and dripping salt into Holmes' hair.

Holmes stared at the window in front of him; Mrs Hudson stood reflected in the glass, one hand covering her mouth. She had brought a candle into the room, perhaps drawn by his screaming. Or at least, his throat felt raw and abused, more so than vomiting alone could account for, so he concluded that he had strained his vocal chords doing so. He felt groggy and heavy, and managed to deduce that the drug still filtering though him had prevented Watson from waking him right away. Other subtle sensations clung to his limbs, an odd weight and the trembling wake of a rush of…something. And he ached in unfamiliar places. He thought at first that he must have fought Watson in his sleep again, but that made no sense because the dull throb seemed unlike the sort of ache that comes from that kind of exertion.

When the actuality dawned on him, a tiny, strangled sound worked its way from his throat and he drew his legs up toward his chest as if he still had a chance to ward it off. He had spent himself in his sleep, in conjunction with the dream. In the bed he shared with Watson. Probably while Watson was holding him – touching him and trying to wake him and calm him down so that he knew he was safe. He had –

"Noooo…" Holmes moaned, low and long and drawn out. He could feel the sticky, damp residue shift against his genitals as he moved, and his denial tipped up at the end of his wail into some sort of throttled squeak. Which parts had been real, and which the dream? Watson had been speaking to him – those had been _Watson's_ arms, not Fourth Man's. And the reassuring whispers and the soothing touches, the embrace – he didn't know who those had come from. He didn't know because Fourth Man really had said and done some of those things, and soothed him and dripped honeyed words into his ear and called him a dear boy. "No, no…no…"

"Shh! Stay here," Watson enjoined, his voice laced with a trace of desperation. He easily contained the feeble struggle that Holmes offered as he tried to shy inward. "You're safe." He gathered Holmes closer and turned his face away from the window so that all Holmes could see was the cuff of Watson's night shirt next to his face, and a parade of stripes adorning the fabric that spanned Watson's chest. "It's okay. I've got you."

Unable to get away from this, Holmes muffled himself in Watson's arm and curled up as small and round as he could, his ankles nestled against Watson's leg and his knees holding him to Watson's side. Sharp tremors wracked his chest but he did not cry. He made other noises, though; gurgling whimpers and odd clicking sounds in the back of his throat. He noted that Mrs Hudson came to bundle away the soiled blanket and top sheet, but the whole of his focus had narrowed to Watson's quiet enjoinders to be still and calm and to breathe, and not to worry because it wasn't a big deal and it didn't matter. The scent of vomit lingered, but then, Holmes was covered in it and had, at some point, smeared it all over Watson's night shirt as well. Did Watson know about the other part? Did he know what Holmes had just done, did he realize?

"Mrs Hudson is drawing a hot bath," Watson told him at some point. Holmes merely laid there, furled up in a tangle of limbs in Watson's lap, still hiding in the crook of Watson's arm as he listened to the drone of Watson's voice babbling on. He watched his own hand curl like talons into Watson's collar, and as if in response, Watson's palm splayed warm and solid on Holmes' back to anchor him in place. "We'll get you cleaned up, and then we'll have a brandy. How does that sound? And a smoke. It's nearly morning anyway. Mrs Hudson can bring us up an early breakfast. Are you in a mood for eggs? I think I would prefer ham, myself."

And so it went on for the twenty minutes that it took Mrs Hudson and the maid to prepare them a hot bath in the middle of the night, until Holmes finally couldn't take the inanity anymore and croaked, "Stop."

Watson did. He broke off in the middle of some pointless monologue on the reordering of the books in their sitting room and took to smoothing down Holmes' hair instead. Vomit-covered or not, Holmes nearly fell asleep like that with Watson's arm around his back and his face pressed into Watson's chest while Watson pet his hair and rubbed gentle but firm circles all over his arm and shoulders. Unrecognized knots of tension eased from Holmes' limbs until he was floating in that semi-lucid state that teeters on the edge of waking dreams.

When Watson shook him, he grunted in displeasure to find himself awake again, disoriented for the time it took to focus his uncooperative eyes on Mrs Hudson, who was holding out his dressing gown, eyes politely directed at the ceiling, and telling him to strip so that she could get his ruined clothes into the wash before the stains set. No thought involved itself when Holmes fought them both on that – can't let Watson see what he did, can't let him know, it's depraved and disgusting, betrayed his friendship by _coming_ in the bed they shared, and Watson would despise him if he knew, and call him an invert and a catamite and a filthy whore, and he'd be right, and Holmes was a genius but he couldn't disprove the truth –

But then Watson had him in a vice grip and he was naked and sobbing and crying and apologizing, and generally descending into hysterics as he curled his knees up to his chest to try and hide what he'd done. Holmes could hear himself, could see it happening, but he couldn't feel it at all and he didn't know how to stop it. Watson covered him with his dressing gown and held him still by sheer force until he stopped raving, then told him again that it didn't matter at all. Holmes had to believe him because Watson was a terrible liar, but he still waited for the assignations that never came.

Something important disconnected in Holmes' mind as Watson rocked him back and forth, and Holmes heard himself telling Watson about a letter he had received four weeks ago from a potential client who thought that her jeweler had replaced her most expensive diamonds with flawed specimens of less than half their value when she had taken a tiara to be cleaned and repaired, which was why he had started tracking the jewel heists yesterday afternoon. Watson stopped muttering and swearing, but he wore a haunted look that Holmes did not much care to see. Eventually, he closed his eyes so that he wouldn't have to, and told Watson that the crime was brilliantly clever. He meant to look into it. Things muddled after that.

Another hazy half hour found Holmes nodding off in the bathtub while Watson scrubbed him pink and cradled his head so that he wouldn't drown. All Holmes knew was that he was warm and clean, and that the air smelled pleasantly of pear soap and wet Watson, which for some reason reminded Holmes of Gladstone even though the canine had been dead for years now. He couldn't think anymore; the exhaustion had left him inebriated, his mind thick like porridge. Or like London fog. Watson's voice droned on like bees, calm and level, but Holmes did not comprehend a word of it even as it lulled him to complacency. It took the last of his ebbing strength to climb out of the bathtub at Watson's urging, and then all he recalled was curling up on the rug after Watson left to find more towels.

Sometime later, Holmes awoke on the settee, and when he let his head flop to the side, he found himself eye to eye with Watson. With his mouth still full of sleepy fuzz, Holmes mumbled, "You look awful."

Watson's mustache twitched, but little else.

Holmes stared blankly at him for a few more seconds, and then directed bleary eyes to the rest of Watson's person. He frowned shortly thereafter. "That cannot be good for your leg."

Watson remained as he was, in a cross-legged lump on the floor before the settee. "You're feeling better," he guessed.

"Yes." Holmes rolled his head back onto the throw pillow and made a feeble effort to stretch his cramped limbs, all the way down to his fingertips. Then he sagged back and licked his lips. "Watson. I find that I must request a favor of you."

"Anything," Watson assured him.

Holmes visually traced a line of powder burns along the ceiling above him. "You must promise not to lose your temper."

The frown was evident in Watson's voice when he cautiously agreed, "Alright."

Holmes nodded, unable to look over for fear of the disappointment he would see on Watson's face. He sucked his lower lip for a brief moment, and then drew a deep breath. "My desk drawer is unlocked. You will find my needle and a quantity of morphine in addition to my usual cocaine."

The only response that Watson offered was dead, weighted silence. Then he guessed, "You took morphine last night, didn't you. That was why I could not wake you."

Holmes pressed his tongue against the velvety inside of his cheek and nodded.

"Damn you – I thought you'd fallen into a fit!"

"I know," Holmes murmured, his eyes creased at the corners in an expression of pain at the way Watson's shouting grated the insides of his skull like broken glass. "Watson, I cannot apologize enough for frightening you like that."

"No, you can't," Watson replied. "But apparently, what you _can _do is ask me to bring you more of the vile – "

"I want you to destroy it."

Watson broke off his fledgling tirade.

His voice a fine and jagged whisper, Holmes repeated, "Destroy it."

A hand slid gently across Holmes' chest and then up to turn his face away from the back of the couch. Watson stared at him with wide blue eyes, as if he dared not hope that he had heard Holmes correctly. "Are you certain?"

Holmes nodded before he could talk himself out of it. The morphine…he never wanted to experience another dream like the one he had endured last night, and as for his other vice… If he truly became such a despicable character under its influence that Watson could not stand his presence, then perhaps he was better off without it. He could attempt other methods of regulating his black fits, and if none of them worked, then the cocaine would still be there afterward. It probably would not kill him to try. "All of it. Please, John – just keep it away from me."

Watson started nodding like a fool with a broken neck. "I will. Don't concern yourself about it any more; I'll dispose of it."

Holmes mouthed a silent thanks and then rolled away to huddle against the back of the settee. The naked relief on Watson's face…it looked the way Holmes felt every time he pushed the plunger down. He heard Watson scrambling around for several minutes, rattling desk drawers and ferreting out every last phial in Holmes' possession. Eventually, Watson hurried from the room, probably afraid to delay too long lest Holmes take the words back.

Holmes found himself wallowing in a wake of silence as sunlight gradually encroached on his curled body. He could not shake the picture of himself crouched on the floor in the dark with the needle curled into his flesh.

_Need it real bad, don't you Mister Holmes. Crawling on the ground like a good little whore to get it…_

"Stop," Holmes wailed under his breath. He freed his hands from the blanket that Watson had draped over him, and ducked his head under his arms. The two things were nothing alike.

"Holmes?" Broad hands tugged at his elbow, and Watson's voice reached him quietly through the gloom of the blanket he had stuffed his nose into. "Come out of there before you smother yourself."

Holmes consented to relinquish the blanket tangled about his elbows, and Watson rolled him over onto his back again. All Holmes could say was, "I need a case."

"What about your jewel thieves?"

Holmes followed the line of Watson's arm as he pointed to the mess of scrapbooks that Holmes had marked up the day before. "That isn't a pressing matter. It will take months to collect all of the necessary data."

"Then we'll find something interesting in the post," Watson declared.

Dubious but with no other recourse, Holmes grunted acceptance of the proposal. Lost cats and stolen pens…servants stealing silver tea spoons… He would prefer a good, honest double homicide. "I suppose we will have to make do."

"Good." Watson smiled at him, and it was that blinding one again. Holmes had to look away from it. The morphine must not have worn off yet, not entirely; he could still perceive crystalline edges to some of the objects he gazed at, including Watson's own person. But only when he smiled like that. "Breakfast first," Watson added. His hand smoothed down Holmes' arm and then briefly grasped his lax fingers before pulling away. "I'll fix up your plate while you dress."

Holmes listened to Watson's footsteps thump-shuffling across the room, and then he raised his fingers in front of his face – the ones Watson had just touched. The fresh morning sunlight caught on the pale skin of his knuckles and sent it fracturing into long talons of shadow that striped the back of the settee. Dust motes danced about his fingernails like diamond dust. His skin retained an imagined measure of warmth where Watson's hand had gripped him, and Holmes found himself thinking quite involuntarily of the solidity to be found in having Watson curled along his back.

"Ham?" Watson called from across the room.

The surrealism of the moment shattered and Holmes dropped his hand. "No. Just eggs."

"They're hardboiled. I could ask Mrs Hudson to scramble some for you instead."

"No," Holmes replied, his voice gruff with the vestiges of drugged sleep and too little actual rest. He rolled himself to his feet and caught at the arm of the settee as he stumbled under the surprising weight of his own body. Definitely still drugged, he concluded. Even as he came to that conclusion, various patches of his vision sparkled in a scintillating wave and then dulled again. "Hardboiled will suffice. And toast. I will be out in a moment."

Holmes took his time with his morning ablutions, a rather new habit that he knew was starting to worry Watson, but he could not help it. The concerted ritualization of scrubbing himself clean, of making certain that he smelled only of himself and perhaps of a hint of Watson, comforted him more than he cared to admit. If he caught a whiff of ammonia or sewage at any point during the day, he could tell himself with perfect confidence that the smell was not on him.

Once he had washed himself into a slightly itchy state of pink spotlessness, Holmes donned whatever clothes he had on hand, and detoured into the hall to retrieve the morning papers. He and Watson sat in companionable silence for a while after that, sipping at coffee and trading pages of the newspapers over the toast rack. The scene reeked of domesticity, and the mundane quality of it had ceased to irk him in recent weeks. On the contrary, the knowledge that this at least remained exactly the same brought him an embarrassing amount of comfort. Undoubtedly, he was growing soft and complacent, and that would simply never do.

Holmes quelled the comparison that his traitorous mind drew between domestic habits and housewives – delivered in a voice that he had grown to hate and fear in equal measures – and turned to the last page of the Morning Chronicle. He scoured the headlines and opening paragraphs of several articles, combing through in his usual fashion for anything that might have an impact on the criminal underbelly. A box of text in the bottom left hand corner arrested his attention even before he realized what had drawn his eyes to it in the first place. The headline read: _Criminal trio apprehended._ And somewhere below that, the name _Josiah Redding_ swam up from a jumble of letters crammed together in badly smudged newsprint.

Holmes lowered his coffee cup back to the table, unsure of his ability to hold it without spilling anything. A glance at Watson confirmed that he had noticed nothing amiss, and Holmes bent himself to the task of deciphering the marred article. It appeared as if the corner of this particular page had snarled in the printing press, but not badly enough to justify scrapping it. In spite of the crinkled page and a few overlapping lines of text, Holmes had no trouble reading the article.

_Inspector Geoffrey Lestrade of Scotland Yard confirms the arrest and confession of three gentlemen known to have perpetrated several armed robberies against English gentlemen. The three criminals – Messrs Josiah Redding, Dale Kirkpatrick and Smitty Williams – were apprehended after escalating to the most heinous assault of an unnamed London gentleman. The evidence in the matter is sound, according to Inspector Lestrade, and the three criminals are expected to be sentenced on Friday of this week. _

Holmes blinked at the brevity of the article – three measly sentences? – and then he narrowed his eyes at it.

"Well then," Watson piped up, setting his empty cup aside to allow him a moment's stretch. "I have rounds until one this afternoon. Will you be here when I return, or do you plan to go out?"

Watson was well aware of the shameful fact that Holmes did not leave the house on his own anymore, but Holmes forbore to point out the uselessness of asking a question to which he already knew the answer. Instead, he queried, "You did say that you spoke to Lestrade yesterday afternoon, did you not?"

Watson dropped his arms and glared to the side in such a manner that Holmes did not think him aware of how much he was giving away, his shoulders settling into a tense line. "Yes, I did. He was most unhelpful."

"But he told you that he had apprehended the men responsible for…" Here, Holmes faltered quite unexpectedly and scrambled to find some suitable way of completing the thought. "…for my…me."

Watson actually looked at him that time, his forehead gathering fresh lines as he studied Holmes' guarded expression. "Yes. Why?"

Holmes wondered at the indecipherable ghost of worry lurking beneath Watson's politely concerned frown. "This article only mentions three perpetrators. Why is Lestrade censoring the fourth?"

Watson may have paled a bit, or else the vestiges of the morphine made it appear so. "There must be some mistake." He held his hand out for the newspaper and Holmes pointed out the offending article. A moment later, too soon for Watson to have actually read anything, he said, "Perhaps this reporter was misinformed."

Holmes took in the sickly twist to Watson's mouth, half hidden under the crinkled edge of his mustache, and then the sweat that seeped onto his brow in too fine a measure to bead and the nervous flutter of the finger that he traced beneath the lines of text in the article. "Watson…you are afraid."

Watson's head flew up and he snorted one beat too late to pass it off as contempt. "I'm sure there has simply been a mistake. In any case, it does not matter what the press hears of it, does it? The less said on the matter, the better, I think." He folded the newspaper into haphazard quarters and all but flung it aside.

Holmes tracked the crackle of newspaper catching drafts of air on its way to the floor, and then he looked to Watson again. Watson, who could not meet his eyes and sat drumming his fingers on the table, his elbow dangerously close to a smear of jam dripping over the edge of its jar. He almost called Watson out – demanded to know what he was hiding, why he looked ready to bolt – but he could not manage it past the confusion bubbling to surface in pinpricks of a formless panic that blossomed all throughout his chest. They had all been arrested – Watson had said so. They were in police custody.

"I am going to be late to my first appointment," Watson announced abruptly. He shoved his chair back and claimed his feet while Holmes sat dumbly staring at a mangled piece of toast still caught in the rack. "Do you need anything while I'm out? Tobacco?"

"Watson, what is going on?" Holmes hated the way his voice trembled and pled but he could do nothing about it now save continue to stare, transfixed, at the disfigured triangle of toast.

"Nothing," Watson snapped. "Are we still out of Port? I'll pick up a bottle on my way home."

A shivering stream of helpless words spilled from Holmes lips, beyond his ability to censor. "Why are you lying to me?"

From the vicinity of the fireplace, Watson made a choked sound and Holmes turned his head to see why. Watson had braced his arm along the mantle and even as Holmes watched, he dropped his forehead into the crease of his elbow. Softly enough that Holmes concluded he was not meant to hear it, Watson whispered, "God help me."

"Why would he need to?"

Watson nearly jumped out of his own skin, a troubling enough reaction under justifiable circumstances but even more so now. He turned wide eyes on Holmes, his expression too jumbled to read.

Holmes breathed, but the air did nothing to relieve the sense that he was suffocating. "What have you done?" Worst case scenarios played out in his mind, a rapid-fire sequence of possibilities cross-references with everything Holmes knew of Watson's character. Then he felt himself grow lightheaded. "Oh my god. Watson, you didn't." A flash of confusion passed over Watson's face, and then Holmes exclaimed, "You actually _killed _one of them? What were you thinking?"

"I…" Watson's face drew a blank. "Wait. What?"

Holmes' thoughts stuttered. "Then you didn't kill one of them?"

"I didn't…_kill_ one of them?" Watson repeated, his tone betraying not only a hint of outrage but also some form of giddy relief. "That's what you think? That I went out and committed a cold-blooded, premeditated murder? I think I should be insulted."

"You did vow to see them dead," Holmes pointed out. "Repeatedly. And as I recall, you made a valiant attempt to brain one of them in front of Lestrade and a dozen of his men." He paused and lifted one shoulder in a failed attempt at a noncommittal shrug. "Not that I object."

Watson tilted his head as if to consider the sincerity of that statement, and then crossed his arms over his chest, still dubious. "Good."

"You still have not told me why that article affected you so."

Watson threw his arms up and stalked off to start disarranging the neat rows of pencils on his desk.

"If you don't wish to tell me, I can always ask Lestrade. He will undoubtedly have a theory or four to offer."

"No!" Watson dropped several pencils and ignored them until they clattered to the floor. Then he glanced down at them as if bewildered to find that they had rolled away only to shake himself a moment later and try to laugh the whole thing off. "Holmes – "

"There is a problem with the case, isn't there," Holmes deduced. "Is it Fourth Man? He would be the logical one to present difficulties."

Watson stopped himself long enough to blink, and then seemed to wilt even as he drew himself back up to his full height. "Let Lestrade handle it. For my sake – just stay out of it."

Holmes lips moved without a sound, and then he asked, "You are no longer eager for revenge?" He had not wanted Watson involved for fear that harm would come to him, either from the attackers or by his own rash actions, but to think that Watson's anger on his behalf had dimmed actually hurt. Had it ceased to matter? This affair had been going on for nearly two months now; of course, Watson would eventually grow weary of the strain of it.

"It's not that," Watson breathed fervently. "I swear, it's not that."

"Then _what_?" Holmes demanded, his voice rising in unexpected anguish. "What aren't you telling me? If there is an issue of evidence, then I can help."

Watson merely shook his head and sought refuge for his uncooperative hands by stuffing them into his pockets.

Of all things, that decided Holmes. Despite the pit rapidly forming in his stomach and the sense that something had gone too horribly wrong to fix – wrong enough to put such an expression of helpless fear on Watson's face – Holmes shoved himself to his feet and made for the door.

To the accompaniment of a startled footstep, Watson asked, "Where are you going?"

"To see Lestrade." Holmes flung the door open and took the stairs at an alarming pace, considering that half of them swam about his field of vision as he stepped on them.

Predictably, Watson pursued him. "Wait. Holmes, _wait_!"

"You have patients," Holmes called back as he landed on the ground floor. "Best not keep them waiting; you'll lose them to other doctors."

"Hang the damn patients! Holmes, I am begging you to stop – you don't know what you're doing."

Holmes snatched his coat from the hook beside the door without pausing to pull it on. That was true, but his pointing it out only confirmed that Watson was hiding something of import from him.

He made it all the way to the bottom step of the front stoop, one foot on the sidewalk, before he had to stop. Baker Street bustled all around him with morning traffic, paperboys hawking their trade at the corner of the street, laughter and footsteps and carriage bells occluded by a cacophony of little feet as a dozen boys ran after the street sweeper's cart catching the brooms he tossed them without reigning in his horse. His normal, busy, happy corner of London. Holmes could see Cartright in the extreme periphery of his vision; the lad had straightened in the doorway of the empty house across the street – the house that Moran had tried to shoot him from. But Holmes couldn't look up to wave him off. He could barely keep breathing – there were workmen coming his way, and they bellowed as they joked and jostled one another, rude language and coarse airs and the back alley accent of men acquainted with manual labor – men for hire to the highest bidder for an honest, or more likely a dishonest, day's work –

Two sets of hands caught at his arms and Holmes only barely flinched as they dragged him backwards to stumble up the steps and back into the foyer. His legs shook and bent like wet noodles as Mrs Hudson shut the door to block out the street and all of its attendant suffocating noise and bustle. Watson eased him to the floor since he couldn't seem to remain standing, then cupped his face and said something that sounded like the embodiment of worry. Holmes struggled to breathe and blink at him, but he felt as if his entire being had been struck like a tuning fork. Holmes could even hear the residual whine – it was a half-step below a perfect A. Watson said something about the morphine and yes – this happened sometimes as the morphine tapered out of his system. Did he nod? This was normal – unwelcome but normal. Holmes attempted to assure him as such, but he didn't think his slurry tongue had actually formed words. Watson frowned at him for his troubles and…checked his pupils? Yes. Holmes was disoriented, overwhelmed, anxious and…why wasn't Fourth Man's name in the paper? Whywhywhy –

" – et him upstairs. He'll be fine, Mrs Hudson."

"My goodness, but he's white as a sheet!"

"Such mild fits have been known to take place after taking a quantity of morphine, and he already had one bad reaction to it today. He just needs to lie down until it's completely out of his system."

Wait, that was a lie - Watson had grimaced as he said it. This wasn't the morphine, then. This was…his heart was going to pound its way straight out of his chest. But Watson knew that…fingers on his carotid, so Watson knew it was a lie when he said it…saving Holmes' pride, then, because he was just panicking, is all…nothing to get worked up about. Holmes turned his head, merely trying to swivel his way out from between Watson's hands, but his body canted in the opposite direction. Like an eel. He flung his hands out to grasp at Watson's shirt – steady on, old fellow –

Watson somehow kept him sitting upright against the wall. "Whoa. Holmes, be still. Just let me – "

"Why'sn 'ee in the paper?" Goodness…he sounded drunk, and his breathing had become terribly labored. Holmes ducked his head as it grew too heavy for him to support, and found a conveniently placed shoulder to lean it on. "…mng…" He was going to pass out.

Watson heaved a great sigh and Holmes felt himself move along with the expansion of Watson's rib cage. "You've really done yourself a deuced good turn this time, haven't you."

"I'm a…yeah…" Holmes' stomach lurched and he felt his throat vibrate as he emitted a feeble whine.

"Don't throw up on me, old chap. I haven't any other clean trousers at the moment."

"Wha'sin." Holmes licked his lips and tried to breathe more deeply so that he didn't sound so terribly winded. "Watson, thereza…men on thuh sidewalk."

One of Watson's hands crept from Holmes' arm to the nape of his neck. "I know. I saw them; they're just construction workers."

"He isn' in…the docks, is he?" Holmes twisted himself closer to the warmth that Watson offered – good stalwart old Watson…lied, he lied. "They couldn' get him. You said…you said they had 'em all, but they didn' have 'im…an' you lied…" Don't, don't do that…sniveling…just don't cry; get a grip. "You lied to my face, right…right to my face, Watson." _And I didn't see it._

Watson's other hand relocated to Holmes' back and gathered a firm grip on a fistful of waistcoat. His fingers tightened across the nape of Holmes' neck too. "I'll handle it, okay? Just let me handle it."

"But he's out there." Count the buttons and look at the shoes and don't die. Forty two buttons but there were more than that, and –"You lied to me!"

Watson rocked with the force of Holmes' wrenching at his shirtfront. "I'll fix it. I swear, just…oh god, Holmes, please don't cry."

"…lied, you lied – " He twisted his fingers into Watson's shirt, caught a pearl button in his grasp, and then screamed, "_Liar_!"

Watson tighten his grip, arms all around him now, and Holmes planted his nose in Watson's elbow so that he could breathe. "I know," Watson whispered, and he sounded so haunted. The way Holmes felt all the time now. Watson gathered him closer and started to comb his fingers through Holmes' hair, but they were shaking so he ended up just clenching his fist around a few tufts, and it prevented Holmes from lifting his head. "I'll take care of it, Holmes."

"No, but he's still out there, and… You _lied_ to me about it!" He didn't see it, he didn't even notice and there had to have been tells. He was slipping.

"Okay," Watson breathed. He tucked himself around Holmes' trembling body – solid, safe Watson – and pulled him mostly into his lap. "I lied. Okay? I wasn't trying to be dishonest; I just didn't want you to… This, I didn't want this, okay?"

Holmes shivered and felt a feverish sweat erupt throughout half his body and couldn't swallow properly, but he made no effort to pull out of Watson's grasp. Instead, he sagged forward and let Watson support the weight of his upper body as he moaned, "You're a liar."

"I know," Watson whispered. And from the tone of it, he really did. His lips moved against Holmes' scalp as he spoke, and his arms were probably the only thing that kept Holmes from shaking himself apart against the wall. "I'll make it better. I promise."

"You said it was better yesterday," Holmes wailed softly. Then he breathed a nearly inaudible, "Menteur," into Watson's shirtsleeve. Was Mrs Hudson still there? Blasted woman, snooping at keyholes. So what if this was her foyer? She should mind her own business. Holmes blinked at the lack of shadows cast against the wall over Watson's shoulder and decided that she must have left them alone after all.

"You have every right to be angry with me," Watson told him. His inflection implied a need to reassure Holmes that such an emotion would be justified.

"I'm not angry." The words surprised Holmes, coming as they were from his own mouth, but they were true.

"Do you know what you _are,_ then?"

Of course, Watson knew to ask. They played this game sometimes when Holmes was out of sorts. Usually, it grounded him enough to allow the logic to take over again, but not this time. This time, Holmes felt…something. He didn't know what. Strong emotion had always confused and perturbed him; he didn't know how to identify most of the ones he felt, which was why he simply ignored them. But this one wouldn't go away, and for the life of him, he could only think of one way to describe it, and it horrified him to think it.

"Holmes? Are you still with me?"

He had to say something, but he didn't want Watson to know what he was actually thinking. So he said it in French instead, knowing full well that Watson would not understand. And maybe that made saying it out loud okay. "Je vous hais." The words fell hollow and empty into the still air and hung there, irretrievable.

Watson nodded, his chin digging lightly into the crown of Holmes' head, and Holmes knew that even though Watson had no idea what atrocity had just passed Holmes' lips, he was forgiven for it. Watson may have been the liar, but he had always possessed the kinder heart. "Let's get you back upstairs, alright? You could do with a spot of natural sleep, and once I return from rounds…we'll talk. If that's alright with you?"

No; it was not alright with him. How could he be sure anymore that what Watson told him was the truth? "Okay."

"Okay." Watson squeezed him briefly and then removed Holmes' arms from their vice grip around his middle.

They took the stairs slowly because Holmes still wobbled slightly from the rapid flare and passage of adrenaline through his body, and Watson's limp had become obvious in light of kneeling on the floor for a protracted period of time. Holmes didn't put up any sort of a fuss when Watson guided him to the bedroom, unwound his cravat and then removed his jacket and waistcoat for him. Holmes watched his fingers move over buttons, smoothing cloth, folding the garments over the footboard of the bed where they would be within easy reach later. Watson tucked him in and feathered his fingers through Holmes' hair, then gave him a smile of such profound sadness that all of the remaining sparkles imparted by the lingering morphine vanished in an instant.

Holmes waited ten minutes for Watson to gather his supplies into his Gladstone bag and descend the seventeen stairs. Then he waited another five, counting the seconds ticking by in his head, before he rose and dressed again. Mrs Hudson had thankfully made herself scarce, so Holmes met with no resistance when he snuck down from his room, skipping the squeaky ninth step and alighting in the foyer with nary a sound out of place. He lifted his coat and hat from the hook where someone – probably Mrs Hudson – had replaced them in the wake of the pitiful scene he had created on the floor.

This time, when he emerged onto the stoop, he took it slow, swallowing repeatedly as he berated himself for a damnable coward. It was broad daylight, he knew this street – it was perfectly safe. He still had to talk himself into shutting the door on the quiet darkness of his foyer, and then to look up as he descended to the sidewalk. No one so much as glanced at him, save for Cartright and his cohorts across the street. Holmes nodded to them because they were giving him puzzled looks in between frowning at each other. No doubt, they were surprised to see him making a second attempt to leave after that…horrid display of cowardice. No matter; let them think what they would.

Holmes waited in front of 221B, his feet frozen to the sidewalk, until an empty cab lumbered by. A quick shout secured it for himself and he darted up into it without bothering to excuse himself to the young married couple – recently wed, less than a month back from their honeymoon in a rather tropical clime, travelled overland for most of the journey rather than by sea as evidenced by the worn insteps of both parties, the wife approximately two months pregnant but the husband unaware of her state – that he narrowly avoided mowing down in his haste to reach the safety of the cab.

At the cabby's somewhat terse query, Holmes hesitated. He could still go back inside. The cabbie would probably shout a bit, but since Holmes had not really inconvenienced him overmuch, he would leave within two minutes. A conciliatory shilling would eliminate the shouting altogether. He didn't have to do this.

Holmes licked his lips and glanced at Cartright's little crew. If he chickened out now, they would see it. Holmes was not much for appearances, but he found himself more sick at the thought of folding while under their gazes, than at the notion of completing his errand. And Scotland Yard was crawling with people – safe and reliable people. It was probably even better than Baker Street, even with _those _men confined inside the same building that he intended to visit. He would not have to see them, though some morbid part of him wanted to, just to be certain that they were actually there. Just in case that was a lie too. In any event, Holmes intended to visit a different wing altogether.

"Oi, there! You goin' someplace or what?"

Holmes jerked and then forced himself to settle with a will that threatened to crumble at any moment. Just go. You're being an idiot. Say the words. "Scotland Yard, cabbie."

"Right, then," the cabbie grumbled. He added something unflattering under his breath as he whipped up the horses, but Holmes was too engrossed in white-knuckling the edge of the hansom's lap door to pay him any further mind. He did notice the boys running along the sidewalk to his left, however, struggling to keep the cab in site. It soured his stomach to admit as much, but Holmes was glad for them at that moment.

-tbc


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N:** Hello, everyone! I know it's been ages and ages since I updated anything. RL really did some mean things. I'm getting back into the writing again - I'm sorry it took so long, and I read every message and review you guys sent in the past year and a half. I know I didn't have a chance to respond to all of you, but I want you all to know that your persistence and your encouragement and your enthusiasm kept me determined to come back to this when I could. So...without further blathering from me, here's the next part of the story! (I'll be trying to get back to all of my unfinished works eventually - thanks to all of you for your patience, and for your lovely reads and reviews!)

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Watson only stopped by his old house in Kensington – now used for his medical practice and nothing more – to ask his neighbor Anstruthers to cover his walk-ups for the day. He did have several house calls scheduled in addition to his in-office consulting hours, but he shirked those with the help of a young lad who looked vaguely familiar – a little lost Irregular, no doubt, though why he was tailing Watson rather than hounding Holmes for a pocketful of biscuits was anyone's guess. Armed with a list of addresses and more shillings than was strictly necessary, the lad made off to deliver Watson's excuses to those high class hypochondriacs who could not be bothered taking a carriage to see their doctor in his practice room. Rich folk felt entitled to everyone else's leisure, Watson mused as he stripped off his blue waistcoat and exchanged it for a darker, wool one that could stand a bit of an excursion to less than savory neighborhoods. And while those titled and landed fellows pressed upon Watson for his precious time in making house calls, the people truly in need had to drag their sorry, sick arses to his doorstep and then wait for him to get back. It was deuced unfair; he should stop making house calls altogether, or else start refusing those who genuinely did not need his extra attentions.

In all honesty, Watson had left Baker Street with the intention of putting in a proper day's work, but the walk to his Kensington rooms afforded him ample time to imagine all of the myriad manners by which Holmes might come to know of the true outcome of Lestrade's investigation. And the lie he had told to try to hide it was even now gnawing at him. He had been called many unkind things by Holmes over the years, not to mention being twitted over his writing on a regular basis, but to hear Holmes calling him a liar as if he had never before conceived of the notion that Watson might tell him a falsehood… That had been more painful than Watson ever could have anticipated. He had tucked Holmes into bed with the niggling feeling that he had shattered yet another lingering facet of Holmes' sometimes boyish innocence. Watson had told him that all the bad men were in the docks where they could not hurt him anymore, but he had known as he said it that it wasn't true.

Or at least, Watson hoped that it hadn't been true. The last thing he wanted in this instance, ironically enough, was to be proven an honest man because if he had _not_ lied, however inadvertently, it meant that Holmes had indeed imagined a fourth perpetrator. The ramifications of that – of telling Holmes that his own mind, his most prized asset, had failed him – were too terrible to ponder. It would break the most brilliant man that Watson had ever known, for though Watson saw more to merit in him than just the calculating machine, Holmes did not; he was nothing without his skill at observation, his deductions…his wonderfully inexplicable mind. If he could not trust his own eyes to see what was actually there, how could he ever again trust himself to solve a case correctly?

The trip to the Punch Bowl ate up half an hour's worth of Watson's brooding thoughts. He was not a stupid man, but he was also not on a par with Holmes when it came to solving crimes. After the fact, Watson could look at Holmes' reasoning and find it simplistic in the extreme – as hindsight rendered all things – but in the midst of an investigation, what Holmes did could only be described as astounding. Watson could fancy himself a student of Holmes' methods, but he knew quite well that his mastery of them only barely surpassed that of, say, Lestrade's. And that was only because Watson had more exposure to Holmes' company than Lestrade did, and had absorbed more of his insight by proximity. In spite of that, he had to try. He would not allow Lestrade to consign his dearest friend to the ranks of hysterics and accidental madmen unless he had exhausted every alternative himself.

The hansom dropped Watson right in front of the dingy establishment, which looked far more shabby in the weak morning light than it did when blazing from within during fights. He fully expected to have to pound on the door for a few minutes to wake someone, but his first rap of knuckles brought the owner outside almost immediately. "Oi! What you be wantin' 'ere, Mister? I 'ave work ta do, so be quick."

"Right," Watson replied uncomfortably. He was not accustomed to doing this without Holmes nearby, at least in spirit. "My apologies for the interruption. My name is Doctor John Watson, and – "

"Aye; you're Mister 'olmes' friend," the man interrupted. He eyed Watson warily for a moment and then jerked his head in a silent invitation as he stepped aside to allow Watson entry. "We ain't seen 'im 'round in almost two months. You 'ere to pay 'is rent?"

Watson removed his hat as he stepped into the dark interior, the whole building contaminated by the cloying scents of cheap ale, sawdust and old, bloody sweat. "His rent?"

"Aye." The pudgy owner left the door open, probably to avail them both of some sorely needed fresh air, and ambled back to the bar where he appeared to have been booking his previous night's earnings. "He's a month behind on it already, and soon ta be a nuther. I don' say nothin' about it usually, since 'e always makes it up, but 'e ain't been 'round for a fight lately. I gots ta make a livin' here, Doctor, so iffin 'e ain't comin' back, I deserve to know, see? I got other blokes what might rent the place."

"Of course," Watson agreed, absently fingering his hat brim. "I'll see that he sends a payment to you this week." He made a mental note to do so himself, though he wondered if he should bother. It seemed unlikely that Holmes would ever desire to come here again, but then, Watson could never be sure with him.

"Tha's right kind of you, sir." The owner hoisted himself up onto a stool and then swiveled to regard Watson with a faint if guarded interest. "What is it I kin do for you, then? You didn' come down to this hole to talk about Mister 'olmes' debts, and I ain't got nuthin on the books about owin' you an unclaimed winning."

Watson cleared his throat and then found himself unable to meet the owner's rather perceptive gaze. "Are you familiar with a gentleman by the name of Josiah Redding?"

The owner straightened on his stool, leaning away in the process. With obvious reluctance, he replied, "I wouldna call 'im no gen'leman. In fact, I 'eard 'e finally got 'imself arrested." He grimaced and then muttered under his breath, "'bout damn time, too."

"Right." Watson resisted the urge to clear his throat again because it would be obnoxious. "Then he was in the habit of coming here?"

The owner spent a few moments in silent contemplation of Watson's person, and then gestured to the ring centered in the open space behind them. "You'll want ta talk to Gruener. He keeps the lads in check 'round 'ere. Down the hall, third door on the left. Tell 'im I said he's ta be civil with ya."

"Thank you." Watson nodded and began to lope off in the indicated direction when the owner's soft cough prompted him to pause. He glanced over his shoulder to see if that were meant as an attention seeking sound, and indeed, the man was looking at him with an odd, expectant expression. "I apologize. Was there something else? If you require an advance on the rent, I would be happy to pay a portion of it now in good faith."

"It's not that, Doctor." The owner's speech had improved considerably, along with a marked unease. "You tell him we miss seein' 'im, will ya? It's not right, what they did. Mister 'olmes is a decent enough fellow, more decent than most we get in 'ere. If it weren't for those blighters bein' in the docks already, we'd've put 'em into the Thames. And not for no swim, neither."

Watson stared for a moment and then looked down. His lips thinned as he pressed them together in the hopes of staving off any emotion that might threaten to show on his face. Then he inclined his head just enough to hide his expression beneath the brim of his hat. "My thanks, sir. I'll be sure to tell him."

The owner nodded in return and then went back to his ledger with the air of man who needed to shake off the memory of having displayed good manners. Watson left him to it and made his way carefully through the room, his eyes straying to the empty boxing ring. The last time Holmes had been there, _they_ had been watching him. They had stood on this very floor, rooting for his downfall, and when it had not come in the ring, they had plotted their own version of it. And Watson could not yet be certain that they had failed at it.

Watson shook off that morose thought and quickened his steps, passing into the back corridor where packed earth, rather than sawdust, served to dull the sound of his footsteps. He knocked on the door that the owner had indicated and waited through the sounds of someone lumbering upright and staggering to answer. The door swung open a moment later, and a very large man paused in the act of some sort of familiar greeting when he realized that he did not know the person standing outside his door. "Mister Gruener?"

Gruener drew himself up abruptly and scowled down at Watson, his features smudged with sleep in spite of the sudden sharpness of his gaze. The man was enormous, and Watson almost expected a French accent to come from the man's mouth, snarled around broken English words, as if he were a relation of that Mister Dredger from so many years before. "Aye. Who the blazes are you, then? How did you get in here?"

Watson straightened more out of apprehension than pride. The man spoke impeccable English, even if his vocabulary had grown coarse on account of the company he kept. Briefly, Watson wondered what had led an educated man to work as a bludger in a dive like the Punch Bowl, and then he experienced a glow of satisfaction at his elementary deduction. Holmes would have laughed at him for being so proud of something so blatantly simple, but Watson chose not to dwell on that particular aspect of it. "My name is Doctor John Watson. The owner has instructed me to say that you're to be civil with me."

"Mm. Doctor Watson?" Gruener's posture became less hostile, but he still eyed Watson warily. It took very little for a man of his bulk to appear intimidating. "That name seems familiar, sir." He stepped aside and gestured Watson in, the sweep of his hand reminiscent of much better breeding than his surroundings suggested. "Have we met?"

"I don't believe that we have been properly introduced," Watson replied. "But I am often here in the company of one of your regular boxers. Mister William Scott?" His thoughts stuttered abruptly and Watson amended that to a mumbled, "_Was_ often here, that is."

Gruener shut the door and indicated a neatly kept table. "Ah. I recall now, sir. You're Mister Holmes' physician."

Watson offered a wan smile in return and sat in the offered chair. "I see that you know him."

"My job here is to keep the marks calm and the fights from getting lethal, sir. I could hardly do that properly without knowing that it's Mister Holmes himself in the ring." Gruener sat down opposite Watson and folded his hands together. "You wouldn't believe the number of blokes we get in here, looking specifically to do him a bad turn."

Watson frowned and cast an uncomfortable glance at the room around him. It was neatly kept and mostly free of dirt, the cot in the corner well appointed and the sheets tucked with military precision. "Am I to understand, then, that it was no great secret who William Scott actually was?"

Gruener appeared apologetic. "Mister Holmes' strength is in disguises, sir. But when he comes here, there's no false appearance to be had, not with being bare to the waist. It wasn't something we talked about, but most folks realized the truth sooner or later. Plenty of people around here know him on sight from his investigations and such. He even keeps some of us in steady employ, just to keep our ears open. He likes to make sure he knows the news around here. We hear things in places like this; men are loose with their tongues when they've got drink and the itch in them."

"Would you be one of those he employs, Mister Gruener?"

"No, sir," he replied shortly. His response seemed to betray an odd brand of pride. Perhaps he believed himself too cultured to fall prey to that sort of employ? "I mind my own business too much to be of any use to him there."

No, not too cultured, Watson thought, studying the man openly. Too disciplined, more like; Gruener was accustomed to obedience, and in a place like this, he would naturally have been instructed to turn a blind eye to the lesser illegalities he may encounter. Watson indulged himself in a split second's reconsideration, and then elected to play a somewhat risky game that he very rarely managed to win at, though not for lack of Holmes' attempts to teach him. "I can see that, sir. May I ask what rank you held?"

Gruener started and then leaned back in his chair as if to reappraise his guest. "Only a sergeant, sir. And yourself?"

Watson grinned in spite of his grim mood. "Corporal. You would have been infantry, no?"

"I would. And you in the medical corps."

"Obviously," Watson replied dryly. "You don't seem to have the manner of someone who returned from combat to find himself without family or homestead. Men of your lineage do not often end up in such a position. There must have been a row of some sort to drive you here."

Gruener's manner stiffened and Watson put himself on guard. "A difference of opinion, sir."

"Irreconcilable, I would guess?"

"Yes, and with all respect to you, Doctor, I can only forgive one man for this sort of prying. You are not he."

Watson started slightly. "Is it too bold to ask who this one man is?"

Gruener ground his teeth for a moment, but not in malice or anger; he merely appeared indecisive. "Mister Holmes has a sort of perspective on family quarrels, sir. I found his unwelcome insight to be rather helpful once."

Watson nodded. There seemed to be many aspects to his old friend that he had never been introduced to, and he wished that the circumstances for uncovering them were not so dire as they were. "He has that talent."

"He's an irritating, pompous busy body," Gruener countered, but the line of his mouth hinted at a flash of mirth. Or even, perhaps, at brotherly affection. "Once you get past that, though, he's not such a bad fellow. Too nosy for his own good, not that he really means it that way. I don't imagine he can help it."

A faint smile washed over Watson's features, but he could feel the sadness in it. "I often imagine the same thing." Any lingering traces of ease died in the wake of that remark. "Mister Gruener, I find myself in a rather untenable position."

Gruener's face mirrored the downfall in Watson's. "Aye. We all heard what happened, but the word is that those – " He chose an extremely unflattering term that colored even Watson's army-hardened ears. " – had been caught."

"That's what I've come to confirm," Watson replied. He shifted in his chair and laid his hat on the table before he could be tempted to pick apart the brim in his agitation. "Do you recall that evening, sir?"

Gruener's face pinched in distaste for the barest moment before he closed his expression off completely. "I do."

"And you saw Redding here?"

"I nearly had to remove him from the premises. He got rather upset at losing a bet."

"Is that unusual?"

"Him losing? No. And neither is the need to toss him out, arse over ankles. He'd bet against Mister Holmes that night. Truth be told, I would have too. Good ol' William looked like he'd come here…well. Not to win."

Watson felt his face pinch and pull his expression down. "_Not_ to win?" Surely Holmes wouldn't throw a match; he was brash and insolent, but he had honor. He would never set up a match for the sake of a paltry bet – to line his own pockets on a bribe. Would he? What if it wasn't his money; what if it was Watson's? Holmes had been so upset at losing Watson's money…

A sharp crack interrupted Watson's troubled distraction; Gruener had slapped the flat of his hand against the table and was now glaring across it at Watson. With a precision of enunciation that could only have come from good breeding, Gruener growled, "Mister Holmes would _never_ fix a match."

Watson swallowed. Until now, he had not felt the least bit menaced by Gruener's imposing bulk. "I apologize. I _do _know that."

Gruener frowned off to one side, considering, and then levered himself to his feet in that manner peculiar to men of uncommon muscular bulk. "I was about to put on a pot of tea, Doctor. Will you partake?"

"That would be most welcome," Watson replied, if only to maintain an appearance of manners. The thought of putting anything on his stomach right now left a peculiar fluttering sensation darting about his innards, but he could hardly find a reasonable excuse to refuse.

"I'm afraid my salary doesn't allow for the luxury of a good blend," Gruener apologized. For the first time since Watson had entered, he appeared mildly ashamed of his circumstances.

"I was in the army, sir," Watson replied kindly. "I assure you that I have had much worse, and in far less hospitable circumstances." Watson shifted and contemplated his hands for a moment. "Mister Gruener… Your remark, earlier…that Holmes did not come here that night to win?"

Gruener grunted and set about turning on the stove. He seemed to consider silence as an answer, but in the end, he merely offered, "Mister Holmes seems an unhappy man at times."

Watson let out a slow breath in an effort not to sigh. "Yes. At times."

"Anyway, he turned about in the ring and gave the lout a sound beating, fair and square. Redding lost near a hundred pounds. He was a damn fool to bet that much in the first place, but you know the type. Can't help themselves – it's the rush."

"Yes," Watson interjected, his voice nearly catching. "I know the feeling myself."

Redding glanced back, smiled as one does to a brother in arms, and then bent back over the tea preparations. "Understand, Doctor. If I'd had even the faintest inkling that Redding was going to hold that grudge, I would never have allowed Mister Holmes to leave here alone."

"You have no need to apologize, sir."

"I do," Gruener retorted flatly. "It's my job to keep order here, and I take it seriously, no matter that what we do here is illegal."

Watson considered arguing, but it would serve little purpose. "Then am I to understand that Redding never took things so far before?"

"Not here." Gruener placed a kettle over the open flame and then reached for a few shining tea cups, chipped around the brims but otherwise carefully kept. They seemed out of place in this setting, and Watson guessed that they were a carryover from his better days. "Redding's got a reputation, and he's a hot-headed piece of – " Gruener cut himself off and mumbled, "Beg your pardon, Doctor. He's got a temper and he toes the line, but he knows better than to rough anybody up here. I'd have his bollux for door knockers, you see; Mister Holmes' fights bring in quite a lot of money. Even if it weren't a matter of friendship, there would be business justifications to putting the man down."

"Of course," Watson agreed, if only to indicate his attention.

"Those cronies of his only ever followed his lead." Gruener tied up two satchels of crushed tea leaves and dropped them into the cups. "They're all three of them spawned from the lowest dregs of humanity. Foul creatures. But Redding was the one who encouraged them."

"Kirkpatrick and Smitty Williams," Watson supplied.

"That's right." Gruener glanced back at Watson, his head tilted curiously, and then returned to his staring match with the tea kettle. "They got all three, then."

"Yes," Watson hedged. He made it clear from his tone, however, that this was not the full story.

Gruener picked up on it and rearranged the teacups for no good reason. "Then why are you here, sir?"

Watson looked down to where his fingers picked at each other in his lap, then forced himself to sit with at least a modicum of the dignity of a soldier. Or of a very close, very worried friend relying on the charity of others' loose tongues. "Did you happen to observe Mister Redding speaking to anyone unusual that evening? A gentleman, perhaps?"

Gruener made no reaction whatsoever at first, and then he slumped to lean his hands on either side of the teacups. "Old Thomas put out that there were four of them. I thought he'd just gotten his facts mixed up."

"No," Watson told him softly. "We think that there were four involved."

"You don't sound so sure," Gruener commented. "What did Mister Holmes say?" He paused suddenly, in speech as well as in manner, and then twisted his upper body around to peer at Watson. "_Did_ Mister Holmes say? I mean, he's alright, isn't he? Thomas said he was a bit off when he saw him, but he didn't…" Gruener trailed off, and for a very short, scattered moment, he seemed genuinely stricken. As soon as the expression surfaced, Gruener turned away to fidget angrily with the teabags. Guilt. "Is that why he hasn't been back? Clyve said he hasn't paid his rent since then."

"I'm handling his rent," Watson deflected. Clyve must have been the owner's name. "Did you see Redding with a gentleman that night?"

"I didn't see him talking to anyone out of the ordinary, no." Gruener glared at the teakettle, observed a bit of steam escaping the spout, and then turned off the flame. "As for any odd gentlemen, we do get a few. I don't recall anyone standing out that night."

"He would have been rather richly dressed," Watson prompted.

Gruener fixed him with a dry, annoyed look. "With all respect, Doctor, I do know the definition of the word 'gentleman.'"

Watson flared his nostrils and looked down again. "That's the only descriptor I have, Mister Gruener. He was dressed in finery and seemed rather anxious to keep the dirt of this part of town off of himself."

"The prim sort usually doesn't make its way in here," Gruener informed him. "What exactly did this gentleman have to do with it?"

Watson took a deep breath and passed his hand over his eyes. "He may have hired Redding's crew to perpetrate the attack."

Unexpectedly, Gruener snorted, and Watson glanced up from under lowered brows to see him pouring water into the teacups. "Redding doesn't take orders, Doctor. You couldn't pay him enough." He finished pouring and set the kettle aside, then made his way back to the table with two carefully balanced tea sets. "Is that what this is about, then? Redding's trying to push off the blame on some imaginary rich gentleman with a grudge against Mister Holmes?" He scoffed again as he set Watson's cup down next to his hat. "That's absurd, Doctor. And Redding's a bloody lying son of a… Sorry." He offered Watson a somewhat apologetic glance. "I'm afraid my language suffers from working here."

"No need to apologize," Watson replied readily. "I have called him much worse, I assure you."

"Good to hear." Gruener blew across the top of his tea and then recollected himself with a start. "Bugger. Did you want sugar, Doctor? I'm afraid we don't get milk down here, but – "

"Please don't trouble yourself," Watson told him gently. "This will be quite enough for me."

Gruener grunted as he settled into his chair again, his saucer cradled in one massive hand, the teacup held primly in the other.

Watson almost laughed at the incongruity of a man who looked like a brute holding a fine tea set with the perfect manners of gentility. He looked like a bruiser sitting at a child's imaginary tea party. It was an hysterical humour, however, and the moment it bubbled about in Watson's throat, he forced it back down. "Erm." Watson coughed to clear his throat and picked up his own tea just to give his hands a task unrelated to fraying the loose strings of his overcoat. "Actually, all three of them confessed to the whole thing. They're not claiming that they were hired for it, or that anyone else was involved."

It took a moment, but Gruener narrowed his eyes and then peered across the table at Watson. "Mister Holmes says there were four, then. And Redding denies it?"

"All three of them deny it," Watson replied, sobered to the point that he didn't think any amount of alcohol could have cured him of it. "And the Yard believes them. There's no evidence, you see, that would confirm a fourth man's presence, especially when the three perpetrators they _do_ have are…gloating over what they did."

"Braggarts, are they?" Gruener growled. A rather menacing darkness pervaded his features; Watson could well picture this man playing the part of a bouncer in the midst of a drunken, rowdy crowd. He changed tacks without warning, but the shadows coloring his expression remained. "So what you're telling me is that Scotland Yard considers their duty done, and they aren't even looking for this other toffer."

"It's…somewhat more serious than that," Watson confessed. "But essentially, yes. I need to find some sort of proof of his existence, something I can take back to the Yard to make them reopen the case. An additional witness from that evening, perhaps, or someone who saw Redding transacting with a strange gentleman either before or after the incident."

Gruener directed a pensive frown into his teacup. "Well…Kirkpatrick has a wife, you know. If there was something odd going on, she might have known about it, though it's not likely. From what I understand, she was pretty close to losing her senses from the shock of learning he'd been arrested. Kirkpatrick wasn't a very nice sort, but he had that woman spelled, if you follow."

Watson nodded; the man was rather cruel to his wife, and the wife had fallen into the inevitable pattern of self blame for the abuse. It was a regrettably common occurrence in the lower classes. Unlike with the more affluent members of society, whose every move and intrigue was the subject of scrutiny and gossip, there were no prying eyes amongst the unfortunates to perform for; so much went unseen and unremarked down here. "Do you know where I might find her?"

"I don't, but you can ask Daniel Cutter. He's one of our regular bookies. From what I've heard, he's had to track down plenty of debts in his day. He should have an address for that rotten little blighter."

Watson finished his tea quickly and left armed with both the address of the bookie Daniel Cutter, and Gruener's blessings, which came in the form of an injunction to, "Show those damn Yarders how stupid they are, will you? If Mister Holmes had said there were fairies in a bell jar in that alley, then you could bet your last sixpence that there were. And all he's saying now is that there's a gentleman hiring thugs to do his dirty work." If it came to it, Watson had the impression that Gruener would gladly lend his own powers of persuasion to anything Watson deemed necessary, legal or otherwise.

Unbeknownst to Watson, Holmes had apparently acquired a whole second life down in this unruly part of London, and a cadre of somewhat brutish if extremely loyal friends. Watson wondered as he nodded his goodbyes to the landlord if Holmes were aware of just how many allies he actually had floating about in the shadows, because none of the people he had met so far fit the strict definition of business contact or informant that Holmes had always assigned to his acquaintances outside of Baker Street. These people cared, and they had few compunctions against showing it. Watson's newfound knowledge warmed him in unexpected ways. However much it seemed so on the surface, he and his friend were not alone in this.

* * *

Holmes would never admit it to anyone on god's green earth, but convincing himself to leave the cab once it brought him to Whitehall had been nigh on the hardest thing he had ever done. And it was shamefully ridiculous to know it. Just two months ago, he would have given that honor to making himself walk away from the falls while Watson screamed his name over the cliff's edge. Leaving his father's home at the age of thirteen would have ranked next. But this – simply stepping from a hansom onto a street he knew as well as his own…

The cab clattered away a moment later; Holmes wasn't sure how much he had tipped the man, but from the grumbling, it must have been inadequate payment for the irritation incurred by conveying him here. A furtive glance about revealed a distressing absence of street urchins; Cartright must have lost his cab in the heavy morning traffic. For some reason, the lack of his customary young shadows troubled Holmes far more than he thought it should. This was Whitehall; Scotland Yard was right there on the other side of the street, directly across from where Holmes stood. He had been here hundreds – no, thousands of times before. And as if that weren't enough, it was broad daylight and every constable who walked out on patrol was known to him, half the shopkeepers and errand boys were known to him – even the beggars bore familiar faces.

After quite too much time spent obstructing pedestrian traffic, Holmes scuttled – actually _scuttled_ – across the sidewalk and through the front entrance of Scotland Yard, where he paused against the wall beside the doors and refused to admit, even in the privacy of his own mind, that he needed that moment to regain his composure. There were people everywhere outside, but it was broad daylight, and none of them smelled foul or looked to have more evil intentions than the usual pedestrian. But Fourth Man was a gentleman; he could have blended in with ease, which meant that other evil men could as well; after all, Holmes had brought his share of gentlemen to justice over the years – rich men, privileged men who everyone had thought above reproach until Holmes had started digging his fingers into matters. And he had already learned that he was not safe alone.

Unfortunately, the crowd inside Scotland Yard was not much better, at least not to a man like Holmes in his current hyper-vigilant state. He slipped past the various people milling about just inside the door and strode down the hall on feet that he imagined barely touched the ground. He tried not to look as if he were in a hurry and desperate to be away from what passed for a throng by his definition of the word, but he was sure that he looked rather unwell as he navigated the corridor that led to the detective branch. So many people, and details everywhere in a wash of stale humanity – there, a woman concerned by the seeming disappearance of her husband; to his left, a young man enraged at the father of the woman he had not been allowed to propose marriage to and suspecting some brand of despicable cruelty within the girl's family; before him and quickly skirted, a business man of disreputable character likely hoping to cast aspersions on a competitor, to ruin his reputation; a pickpocket recently released from the docks, working the crowd in the hallway – nervy lad; an unfortunate woman who looked to have been assaulted, escorted by an older matron – madam and attraction in a brothel, most likely, and the woman attacked by a customer with no respect for the proper treatment of valuable merchandise – and she _was_ valuable, or the else the madam would never have allowed her to file a police report against a paying customer. The madam likely had a connection in the Yard if she expected her girl's complaint to actually result in a charge of assault.

It went on and on without end, and Holmes could not help but see it – see _them_ exposed in all of their glorious mediocrity, open books to be perused at his leisure though he had no interest in reading them. The stories they told were more to Watson's taste than his, characters suited to sea novels and over-dramatized stage plays and romantic drivel. He tried not to look at them, but unlike hapless carriage horses, Holmes had no blinders to wear.

Holmes stopped abruptly, halfway to his destination, a bit of flotsam snagged by a submerged log. He glanced back. The hallway leading to the holding cells branched off a few feet behind him. He had already determined that some sort of conspiracy was in the works here – something about Fourth Man and the men he had hired. And Watson had lied… What if none of them were here at all? Holmes had seem them load Redding into a four-wheeler, but that didn't mean… Were the other two mentioned in the papers even the right men? It was the height of paranoia to suspect otherwise, and yet Holmes stood rooted to the middle of the corridor, seized by the sudden apprehension that maybe everyone was lying to him. After all, he knew Watson better than he knew himself, and Watson had managed to pass one off over him. What of Lestrade or Clarke? There was a newspaper article, but reporters only printed what they were told. As Holmes himself had been told…

His feet were moving before he registered the conscious decision to turn back, walking for a moment against the tide of foot traffic. He twisted his shoulders to avoid side-swiping a young constable with his arms full of files, and then swiveled off into the side passage. There were fewer people here and Holmes moved unhindered with the fingers of his right hand trailing along the wall in an outward bid to maintain his internal balance. A few objects and people in his periphery shimmered in brief flashes of drug-induced aftereffects, but only faintly; the sensory trips were nowhere near pronounced enough to impair his faculties, and they would subside fully by high tea time, if not before then.

"Mister Holmes?"

It should not have startled him, and yet Holmes whirled to put his back to the wall, one breath away from dropping into a defensive crouch. He recovered himself in time to simply freeze, and even that left the color flaming in his cheeks. Clarkey had come out of one of the rooms he had just passed – nothing more. Holmes dropped his eyes and fidgeted away from the wall. "Constable. Good morning."

"To you too, sir." Clarkey dropped his head to one side and took a few steps closer to Holmes, as if approaching a horse prone to bolting. "Can I help you with anything? You don't usually come down to this level."

On any other day, Holmes probably would have snapped something about unnecessarily obvious rhetorical statements, but even as the habitual scowl washed over Holmes' features, the words themselves did not consent to pass his lips. He glowered balefully up at Clarkey from beneath lowered brows, and then his body gave away more than he intended by making him glance over his shoulder. A young sergeant sat behind the desk at the end of the hall, filling out paperwork and guarding the doorway that led to the indoor cells.

A faint, resigned sigh sounded from Clarkey's direction. "Sir…"

Holmes' gaze snapped back to Clarkey and darkened such that he could see the reflection of it in the blanking of Clarkey's features. "Do not dare address me in that tone." A nonspecific yet subtle brand of menace polluted the even timbre of his voice. "If you wish to pity someone, pity yourself."

Clarkey pressed his lips together but had the grace to lower his eyes. "Just the same, I can promise you don't want to do what you're thinking of, Mister Holmes."

"Yes, because you, of all people, can deduce my thoughts," Holmes scoffed.

For a moment, it seemed that Clarkey would elect to clam up, affronted by the unwarranted and uncharacteristic snub. He did not, however; he merely set his jaw and trained his eyes on the floor as he remarked softly, "With all respect, sir, such words are unworthy of you."

Holmes' mouth contracted into an uneven line and he followed Clarkey's gaze to a nondescript panel of flooring. "Many things seem…unworthy of late, Constable. I fear that I am not acting my own part at the moment."

"There's no need for apology, sir. Consider the matter forgotten."

"Mm." Holmes could feel himself wavering on the backwash of morphine in his veins, the edges of his vision blurred to a scattering of sparkles that did not belong. Some distance grew between himself and his own mind, but within a moment, his focus snapped back to the corridor and to Clarkey's politely shuttered expression of concern. In a fit of self consciousness, Holmes dropped his hand from his mouth, where he had been pressing the pads of two wayward fingers to his lips, and straightened like a puppet on yanked strings. "Is Inspector Lestrade in? I should like to speak to him."

Clarkey mirrored the abrupt shift to a sort of stiff formality. "I'm afraid not, sir; he's been at a scene all morning. If you'd like to come back after luncheon, though, I can tell him to expect you. He's due back about eleven."

Holmes tipped his head to one side in contemplation, and his gaze followed with it, slanting off in the general direction of the front entrance hall. There was a café across the street; it sold excellent scones and the tea was always fresh – it even appealed to Watson's finicky palate. But it was always so crowded and the din of voices nearly always overwhelmed him, and Watson was not with him to keep an eye on him or pull him out of it, and there were _people_ there – people he didn't know, people who might be in league with Fourth Man, or know Fourth Man, or _be_ Fourth Man, and Holmes was relatively certain by now that Fourth Man was the one still free, and –

"Or you could wait in his office?" Clarkey suggested, hesitantly adding, "I don't think he'd mind, sir."

"Yes!" Holmes barked even before the last bit of Clarkey's voice had trailed off. Then he suppressed an impulse to wince at the too sudden, too loud exclamation. Drawing himself up with even his feigned dignity looking threadbare, Holmes repeated at a civil volume, "Yes, I would prefer to wait."

Clarkey did an admirable job of not reacting to Holmes' odd behavior, which paradoxically made Holmes more agitated rather than soothing his somewhat maimed pride. "Very good, Mister Holmes. I'll go with you to unlock the door."

_Yes, because apparently, poor Mister Holmes can no longer be trusted to even find his way through the halls without a child-minder_, Holmes thought, his very thoughts surly for no reason that he could put words to. All of the carefully guarded conversation, the sudden cessation of certain harmless topics, the looks people gave him when they thought his attention elsewhere, the blasted _care_ that every bloody person took with him now – be quiet around Mister Holmes, do not upset Mister Holmes, do not make eye contact with Mister Holmes, do not comment on Mister Holmes' behavior or move too quickly in his sight or let him go about alone or handle dangerous chemicals, and for pity's sake, under no circumstances is he to be allowed to walk through Scotland Yard without an escort. It was bad enough that Clarkey could not stop himself from making such an irritating display of concern toward Holmes, but to have everyone they passed, from the lowliest clerk on up, avert their eyes because it was _him_ and then pause to stare after him once they assumed that his notice had moved on –

Holmes did not exactly want solitude, but paradoxically, he did wish for nothing other than to be left alone, to be utterly anonymous and boring and so easily overlooked that if asked about his passage later, they would recall nothing other than the faceless crowd streaming along the corridors – a gentleman so average and nondescript that it was as if he had never passed through at all.

Just for a moment, as he followed Clarke up a short flight of stairs and feigned ignorance of the discomfort and pity on the face of yet another Yard man, Sherlock Holmes wished that he could be Common.

* * *

It didn't take Watson more than half an hour to track down the bookie Daniel Cutter. Of all the ridiculous things Watson had seen during his years with Holmes, a bookie with a proper office suite ranked near the top. Cutter rented a series of rooms on the third floor of a factory building down at the docks; they appeared to have belonged to an accountant before him, and a rather more affluent one than would normally condescend to take rooms in that part of London. Obviously, Cutter was not the first businessman of dubious morals to utilize the suite. The building next door was none other than the fishery that Smitty Williams was purported to have worked at.

Watson stared at the fishery for a long moment, his thoughts blank. Then he simply turned and mounted the stairs to Cutter's building. A bruiser greeted him, but he treated Watson with a surprising degree of deference. It took Watson half the trip upstairs, following in the bruiser's wake, to realize that the courtesy was probably due in part to Watson's solid payment record, but more because of a certain amount of insulation that one garnered from being the confidant of Sherlock Holmes, who just happened to moonlight as the boxer who regularly made Cutter an obscene amount of money.

The bruiser showed Watson into a small office and shut him in. Watson stood in the center of the floor, listening to the slow cadence of heavy footsteps fade back down the stairs. A small, somewhat gaudy rug decorated the sitting area – expensive, though in poor taste. Watson toed the nap and wondered vaguely if Holmes would have been able to deduce the height and body type of his soon-to-be host from the indentations left near the chairs. The scent of old tobacco hung in the air and Watson wrinkled his nose. Holmes would have known the brand and the length of time elapsed since the last person had smoked a pipe in the room, in addition to the chair occupied by said person and perhaps that person's state of mind at the time – agitated pacing, leisurely relaxation... Watson saw only an empty room around him, the atmosphere unpleasant and stale.

Several minutes passed before Watson heard footsteps again. He turned to greet the opening door, which disgorged a short, unkempt man swathed in clothing far richer than what his bearing deserved. "Mister Cutter?"

The man nodded and shut the door before addressing Watson. "Word travels, Doctor Watson. They said you was lookin' about the Punch Bowl, askin' after my books?"

Watson shifted his stance and tried to slouch a bit. He felt out of place, attired in less finery than cutter and yet poised more nobly. "Not exactly. I've come to inquire after an address for Mister Kirkpatrick."

"Kirkpatrick's in the Yard," Cutter replied, his tone and manner both put-upon.

"Yes," Watson said. He cleared his throat. "I need to speak to his wife."

Cutter's eyes narrowed, and he finally paid a bit of attention to Watson. He still hadn't asked him to take a seat, though. "What you want her for?"

Irritated now, Watson snapped, "I ask on behalf of Sherlock Holmes. I will not discuss his business with you."

"Oy!" Cutter straightened and strode past Watson, his posture mellowing as he walked. "Why didn' ya say so in the first place?"

"I wasn't aware that it was necessary," Watson grumbled, stroking the brim of his hat where he held it against his stomach. His fingers betrayed his agitation.

"Right, now." Cutter pulled a key from his waistcoat pocket and unlocked a heavy oak cabinet that stood against the far wall. "She's a nutter, that one," Cutter informed him. No doubt, he was trying to be helpful in some as yet undetermined fashion. He drew out a small ledger book and flipped to the end. Watson sidled closer but stopped when the bookie's gaze cut sideways to warn him off. "Patty Boy's got rooms near the timber yard in Hoxton. Shoreditch road. Stay south of the timber mill, right? Nasty place, that."

Watson nodded. "Of course. Thank you very much, Mister Cutter."

Cutter merely snorted in response. "Won't be thankin' me once you get a gander on that place. The stench alone could kill a man."

"I'll keep that in mind," Watson replied dryly. "Good afternoon, Mister Cutter." As Watson turned to leave, Cutter peered over his shoulder. Something in the man's rheumy eyes spoke of an odd brand of wariness, and it held Watson's focus long enough to stop him at the door.

Cutter examined him with a shadow of shrewdness and then opened his mouth to breathe. "Doctor Watson, you remember me and my boys here. We got favors owed to Mister Holmes, and I don' like holdin' onto debts for too long. If you got trouble brewin' somewhere over this, we'll clean it up good. Just say the word."

Watson blinked and felt himself withdrawing at the intensity in Cutter's eyes. He may have thought little of the man upon first seeing him, but the glint of Cutter's pupils as he stared Watson down spoke of a dangerous quality. Hesitant to offend, and yet – in all honesty – scared witless all of a sudden, Watson nodded. "Your offer is most kind, Mister Cutter. I will remember it."

"Good." Cutter showed Watson his back and made a show of examining the innards of his oak cabinet.

Watson stared at him for a moment longer and then beat a hasty retreat. The bruiser grinned at him as he hurried out of the building, and in hindsight, Watson reflected that he might have been stupid to come to this place alone.

* * *

"Simpletons," Holmes muttered, agitated. He scribbled an injunction across the front of the case file he had been thumbing through to ask the nanny why she stopped donating her old linens to charity. The letters swirled out in a large and florid script, a far cry from his usual cramped handwriting, nib gouging the thick material of the folder. Then he flung it aside with all the rest of Lestrade's paperwork. "_Obviously_," he shouted at the empty office, "her brother talked her into it." With a frustrated huff, Holmes pressed his lips together, eyes scouring the now cleared work space. He felt a tiny trickle of apprehension when he realized that he had just cleared Lestrade's entire caseload, and there was nothing else in here for him to do to keep from going mad while he waited.

Holmes shot to his feet and took to pacing, his footfalls loud in the enclosed space, clacks echoing off of the rather bare walls. Lestrade kept very little in the way of décor; it was simultaneously refreshing not to be subjected to a plethora of meaningless trinkets and distracting colors, and maddening to have nothing upon which to focus his attention, not even banal keepsakes or depressingly sentimental clutter from which he could deduce the occasions upon which they were gifted to Lestrade. A grateful widow here, an appreciative and avenged victim there… For perhaps half a minute, Holmes paused at the window behind Lestrade's desk and contemplated popping over to the café for a nip after all, but without conscious decision, he simply ceased thinking on the option altogether and resumed his aborted circuit about the office.

His initial aim in going through Lestrade's case folders had been to find his own, obtain the information he required, and then leave without bothering to speak to Lestrade at all. Holmes was not accustomed to needing things from Scotland Yard that he could more easily or comprehensively obtain on his own elsewhere, and it rankled him to know that in this – in a case that directly involved himself – he had been kept from a most vital piece of information. It was like being called to a crime scene gone ten days cold – no useful evidence left, ground trampled, scents carried away and linens already washed and aired out. What use could he be to anyone if he was only ever called in too late?

"Mister Holmes! A pleasant surprise, no doubt."

_Don't panic._ Holmes forced his mouth to twitch into a welcoming shape and made a very deliberate show of turning around to face the door. "Inspector Lestrade. How good to see you."

Holmes' knees locked and he felt more steady on his feet because of it, regardless of the continued rapid pounding of his recalcitrant heart. He should have heard Lestrade approach, should have recognized his tread in the hallway and been waiting expectantly for the door to open. He should not have been caught so entirely off guard that Lestrade had not only opened the door, but closed it behind himself and advanced halfway across the room without alerting Holmes to his presence. This behavior had to end; Holmes could not afford to be so distracted in his line of work. The last time he gone about in such a state...well. It had gotten him _here_, hadn't it.

Lestrade hung his great coat on the tree in the corner, his hat in one hand and his scarf draped over his arm as he made his way to his desk. "To what do I owe the… Mister Holmes, what have you done to my desk?"

"Oh, that!" Holmes sidled out from behind the desk and paced toward the opposite wall, his mannerisms crafted to appear normal even though his usual movements felt like ill-fitting clothes pulling at his limbs in all the wrong places. "Consider it a gift. Tis the season, and all."

When Holmes turned around, Lestrade was eyeing him warily. "It's October, Mister Holmes. Hardly the season for gift giving."

Holmes felt his cheek tic, perhaps in irritation, and drew himself up with feigned indignation. "I'm getting started early." The artifice of it left him off balance somewhere inside.

Lestrade's eyes narrowed and he picked up one of his files to read what Holmes had scribbled on the cover. After a moment, he blinked, shifted his focus to the folder below it, and then looked up, his eyes wide. "You solved _all_ of them?" he demanded.

The note of anger in Lestrade's voice made Holmes shrink back even as he cursed himself for a sniveling coward. Lestrade could hardly hurt him; Holmes had seen the man fight. "Pedestrian," Holmes waved it off. "Hardly up to my usual fare."

Lestrade bristled. "_Pedestrian_?" He appeared to bite his tongue over a further outburst, and Holmes cocked his head in fascination as Lestrade visibly calmed himself. "Right. Mister Holmes, in future, I would appreciate it if you refrained from disturbing my things. This – " He waved a hand over the surface of his desk to encompass all of his files and loose notes – "is official police business, and as much as I respect your abilities, it is not for public consumption."

Normally, Holmes would shrug off a comment like that, make some snide remark about the merits of a false expectation of privacy versus actually solving crimes, not to mention that Holmes was hardly _the public_, and skipped into his actual purpose for coming here. Rather than irritation at Lestrade's thick-headedness, however, Holmes merely felt weary and small at being chastised yet again for his inability to _not_ see everything so clearly. Holmes turned away and fumbled with his sleeve, straightening the cuffs and tugging them down even though he refused to button them. "As you wish, Inspector. I have no desire to cause a stir."

Behind him, Lestrade sighed, a resigned sound, and his footsteps carried him closer to where Holmes stood. "Why did you come, Mister Holmes? What can I do for you?"

Holmes raised his head, but his eyes refused to focus on the coat tree in front of him. In his periphery, just past his left shoulder, Holmes could see Lestrade poised waiting for a response. His posture indicated concern and something solicitous which turned Holmes' stomach for its direction at his person. It was too akin to pity for his liking. "I read the article in paper this morning about the sentencing of three of my attackers." It was only a great force of stubbornness that allowed him to complete that sentence without hesitation or a break in tone. "I am here to satisfy myself as to their correct identification, and to inquire as to the identity of the fourth man." He gave a dismissive sniff and lowered his eyes to where his fingers picked at themselves. "Watson indicated that there was some trouble with the investigation. If that is the case, then I wish to offer my services toward his apprehension." He gritted his teeth briefly and shifted his gaze sharply to the side, away from Lestrade, lids blinking rapidly with an emotion so suppressed that it didn't even register. "Such as my services are, at the moment," he added lowly. He was suddenly glad for the lingering effects of the morphine in his system. They dulled his whole being to a bearable intensity.

For a moment, the office was silent. Then Lestrade took a deep breath and swore softly on the sigh that followed. "Mister Holmes," he started, but said nothing more.

Without looking back, addressing the silence obliquely, Holmes calmly ordered, "Do not tell me to let this lie. I will not. I do not care who he is or what his connections may be, Lestrade. I will have him. Do you understand me?" His voice grew in intensity but not volume. "I refuse to continue on like this. I wish to leave my own home without wondering if he is near, if I will encounter him on the street. I am tired of…" He trailed off, his lids fluttering low into deceptively lazy slits, his breath slow and weakened, but not shallow. In a whisper, ashamed to admit this truth to anyone, let alone Lestrade, Holmes forced himself to finish. "I am tired of being afraid."

It seemed, at first, that he had spoken too softly to be heard, or perhaps that he had not actually allowed the words past his lips at all. But then Lestrade's hand slipped gently onto his shoulder, and then man himself followed, stepping into Holmes' direct line of sight. "I am keeping nothing from you that could pose a danger, Mister Holmes. My word, I would not do that to you."

Holmes nodded to acknowledge that, but his eyes remained stubbornly fixed on a point just beyond Lestrade's elbow. "Watson refuses to speak of it," he said. He could hear how calm, how unaffected his own voice was, and it disturbed him, but the sparkles from the morphine made it impossible for him to care overmuch that he may be giving things away by his placitude. "He knows something of it, but… Lestrade, please do not make me beg. I know that there is something amiss. I only ask for the truth from you."

Lestrade was nodding in the corner of Holmes' eye, a reluctant gesture as if from the gallows-bound. "If I told you that all those involved had been neutralized, that I am certain that the case is closed and that no danger remains, would you leave it at that?"

Holmes looked up at that, the spell of the morphine finally broken. Lestrade truly did not wish to elaborate; there was something very wrong here, and the knowledge that Holmes could not _see_ the solution grated his nerves deep inside where little else could have touched. "Would you leave it?" he asked. Holmes deduced that this response alone would be convincing, and he was correct.

Lestrade closed his eyes briefly and patted Holmes' shoulder before removing his hand. He stepped away, perhaps in anticipation of Holmes' reaction, and held an open hand out, not to invite clasping but in entreaty. "God, I don't even know how to say this. Mister Holmes, there is…no evidence of a fourth man's existence."

"Obviously, he would have used an alias in his dealings with the others." Holmes scowled at the ineffectiveness of Scotland Yard; he should have anticipated this. "You must look beyond that."

"I said, 'of his _existence_,' Mister Holmes. Not of his identity."

Holmes parsed through that statement, then treated Lestrade to a stern frown. "You're not making sense, Inspector."

Lestrade nodded, his jaw set in unforgiving lines. He met Holmes' gaze without flinching. "There is no fourth man, Holmes."

"What are you talking about? Of course there is. I told you – "

"There is no fourth man." Lestrade stepped closer to Holmes, and Holmes twisted backwards to remain out of arm's reach. "There is evidence of only three. There are witnesses to only three. The testimony of the previous victims states that there were only three."

"Stop being ridiculous, Lestrade." Holmes felt wild for a moment, his hands clenching only to release at the clammy feel of a cold sweat breaking out on his palms. "He obviously has some hold over the other victims – blackmail, perhaps, on account of their…perversions. It only makes sense that they would hide his involvement. If you allow me to speak to them – "

"We have confessions, Holmes." Lestrade moved forward again, and again, Holmes shied. Lifting his hands in a conciliatory gesture, Lestrade held his position and pressed, "Redding, Williams and Kirkpatrick admitted to sole responsibility for _all _of the assaults."

Holmes shook his head. "No. You have bungled this investigation – "

"They had no contact with each other prior to interrogation. Their versions matched in every way. There was no contamination – "

"No! They are lying to you. You _must _see this!"

"There were only three men, Holmes." Lestrade appeared to be having difficulty with his breathing, and his voice sounded strange. "All of the evidence bears this out."

Holmes blinked at him. "Has he threatened you? Is that what is going on?"

Lestrade swallowed and then shook his head, turning away to run a hand back over his collar to grip the back of his neck. He straightened a moment later but remained facing away. "There is no conspiracy, Mister Holmes. There were three men involved. We have them all in custody. There is no other man to be found."

Holmes' eyes narrowed and he took a careful step away from the wall. "What does he have on you? I can help, if you'll let me. My brother has connections – "

"For god's sake, Holmes!" Lestrade whirled on him and before Holmes could back out of reach again, Lestrade had firm hold of the lapels of his jacket. "Listen to me, you bloody infuriating git! There _is_ no fourth man! – there never was!"

Holmes stared, his hands gripping Lestrade's where they fisted his jacket. Lestrade did appear to believe this; Holmes could identify none of his tells for deception or evasion, and Lestrade was not enough of an actor to fake this kind of honesty. "But I saw him."

Lestrade blinked in the most peculiar, rapid manner, then unhanded him so abruptly that he basically shoved Holmes from himself. His jacket was now rumpled where Lestrade had grasped and crushed it, but Holmes made no move to straighten himself out; he merely watched Lestrade stalk to the opposite wall, wrestle himself back under control, and then pull his clothes back into place. "I am going to call for Doctor Watson." Lestrade peered over his shoulder at met Holmes' eyes. "I want you to remain here until he comes. Will you do that?"

This made no sense. Lestrade was not dissembling, and yet – "You do not believe me," Holmes realized, and it was just about the most horrific thought he'd ever had. That was alright, though – Holmes could remedy this. "If you will allow me to see the file, the evidence – I can prove it to you. There are discrepancies, I am certain – just let me – "

"Mister Holmes, please." Lestrade turned and gestured at him to stop, to calm. "Wait until Doctor Watson gets here. I promise you, it will be alright."

Holmes balked. "Why are you speaking to me as if I've gone mad? I am perfectly fine, Lestrade; it is _you_ who are making no sense."

"If you'll just sit down, I'll have a constable fetch us some tea."

"I don't want tea, I want an explanation!"

"Mister Holmes – "

"Stop it! Stop speaking to me as if I am addled! I don't – don't need your pity, or – " Holmes swayed and identified the irregularity of his breathing, the dangerous rapidity of his pulse in his ears. "I will find him myself." Holmes pressed his hand to his chest to better feel the expansion of his lungs when he breathed. He seemed unable to focus his gaze on Lestrade's unstable form, so he ceased trying altogether. "I have no use for incompetence; you need not trouble yourself further in this matter."

"There is no one to find, Mister Holmes. You were under a great deal of stress that night - "

"Don't patronize me!"

" - it was dark, and you were violently assaulted - "

"By _four_ men, Lestrade! I counted them, I am not addled, I did not _imagine_ perpetrators - "

" - the shock alone would have tried any man in that situation - "

"_There were - FOUR - MEN_!"

Silence. It rang sharp and clear in the room, and Holmes heard himself struggling to breathe in a suddenly airless room. Clacks and shuffles betrayed Lestrade's rush across the room, and Lestrade caught at his arms before he could fall. "Steady now, Mister Holmes."

Holmes gulped in a breath of air, but it did nothing to dispel the wavering blackness encroaching on his vision. "Unhand me." The words mumbled themselves on the way out, and Holmes sagged against the wall at his back, his body growing heavier than the weight to which he was accustomed. His skull thumped back against the wallpaper and Holmes blinked, owlish in the blur of grays that the room had become. He heard Lestrade summoning someone in from the hallway and wondered when he had fallen to the floor. Hands rolled him onto his back, elevated his legs, and Holmes identified the scent of seven different tobacco blends absorbed into the carpet against his cheek. Morphine was not supposed to make him feel like this.

Holmes' eyelids sagged across his vision and Lestrade's face appeared hovering over him. "We've sent for Doctor Watson." Someone else held a brandy to his lips. Where had all of these people come from?

From nowhere, some giddy part of his mind supplied. They come from nowhere like Fourth Man, and go back to nowhere when they're done. Invisible men that only he could see.

He choked on the brandy and Lestrade swore, and then Holmes slipped into nowhere too, praying to the god he disbelieved in that he would not meet his invisible Fourth Man while he tarried there.

~TBC~


	9. Chapter 9

The Kirkpatrick residence was easy to find, though Watson could tell from the start that he would have done better not to bother looking for it. He also strongly suspected that Daniel Cutter was having a good laugh back in his sitting room. To call the stench of this place merely 'lethal' was a gross understatement. A bath would be the least of Watson's urgent needs once he made it back to Baker Street; he would have to refrain from treating his patients for a few days as well, until the period for contamination had passed and he could assure himself that he had caught nothing untoward from breathing the foul air. At least one of the beggars he passed showed signs of consumption; tuberculosis was rampant in this district. It brought a painful thought of Mary to Watson's mind, thin and bright with her coming death during her last days, her wasted frame delicate and easily broken like the hollow bones of a bird.

Adelaide Kirkpatrick herself appeared healthy enough, though that probably owed more to her not leaving her domicile than to anything hale about her person. The woman was thin and mean-looking, her face brown and wrinkled like old leather though her hands and arms were pale - pale enough to still show the trace of healing bruises where someone, presumably her husband, had gripped her too hard. Watson found himself maintaining more than a discrete distance from her; she had obviously not bathed in recent memory, which could be considered common for the sort of unfortunate that resided in Hoxton. These were truly the most abysmal living conditions Watson had ever seen, and he had seen many poor places in his travels. It was a miracle the whole population of this district had not already succumbed to some locally-bred street disease.

The state of the inner rooms did not improve Watson's opinion of Shoreditch Road. Adelaide Kirkpatrick evidently did not even attempt to keep a tidy house. Two small children of indeterminate gender languished on a pile of bedding on the floor in a corner, nearly invisible in the squalor, one of them scratching at what was no doubt an infestation of parasites, of which lice and fleas could probably be counted as the most harmless. For a moment, Watson paused to stare at them and finally comprehend why Holmes, contrary to his character, took so many street urchins under his wing. And why they were all so very grateful to him for it. To see a place like this and do nothing was beyond even Holmes' lacking sense of empathy.

The woman pulled him from his distraction with a harsh sound – that of her spitting on the floor. How charming. "Roit, now. What you want wiff my 'usband?"

"Uh…" Watson jerked his attention back to the…to call her a lady would have been laughable, and yet not the least bit amusing at all. "I am here to ask after his acquaintances - his business associates, if he had them."

"Wut, yew mean 'is friends?"

"Yes, his friends." Right. Small words, then. "I am associated…that is, I sometimes work with Scotland Yard, and I am not convinced that your husband is…that is, I think that someone paid him to commit the crime he has been charged with, and if that is the case, I wish to find his employer." Watson paused to scrutinize the woman's face for comprehension. "That is, I want to find out who hired him. If I can find him, then your husband…"

Finally, the woman's face softened, and the gradual fading of the hardness in her face revealed a sad shadow of whatever young lady this unfortunate had once been. She never could have been called pretty – her bone structure precluded that – but handsome would have been within her reach a long time ago. "Yew mean that if somebody paid my Patty to do it, they might let him off?"

Watson swallowed hard, his eyes dropping to the hat he held in his hands. "Ma'am, I will not lie to you. It is unlikely that your husband will be released without serving his time. But he may be given an easier sentence if he was hired or…threatened, to make him commit this crime." Not bloody likely, Watson thought in the privacy of his own mind, but only because he had every intention to seeing to it that _all_ of the men involved served the full extent of their time, by legal means or not. The falsehood – and the hope it engendered in this woman – left a sour taste in his throat nonetheless. He did not give himself away by it, his face a study in attentive neutrality, such as he used toward his most troublesome patients. Holmes would have seen his lie, but Holmes was not here.

Adelaide Kirkpatrick stared at him for a long moment, her eyes shining, and then she turned to bustle at a filthy table next to a stove that contained something hovering in the early stages of putrefaction, to judge by the stench. "My 'usband's no' a bad man, Mister. He only does wut 'ee does cuz of wut we needs. He loves me, yew know. He likes bringin' me presents, but tuppins is 'ard ta come by. He jess doesn' know no better, an' that Josie bugger told 'im 'ee could 'ave money for 'elpin' 'im." She paused, frowning at the tabletop as she wiped a dirty rag over its rough surface. "S'my fault, really. Iffin 'ee didn' love me, 'e wouldna got caught up in that mess jess tryin' ta get coins fer me. He wouldna been stuck 'ere at all, rottin'."

Watson blinked a few times, unsure of his grasp of everything that she had just said. Haltingly, he offered, "I'm sure that you can't be blamed for his poor choices."

"An' why not?" Adelaide turned on him, the rag held out shaking in an impotent threat of violence. "I'm the one what made 'im love me. I made 'im ask my 'and in marriage, even though I knows I ain't worth it. If itwernt for me, 'e wouldn' be stuck 'ere tryin' ta scrape a livin' outa the dead groun'. I got every lickin' comin' ta me, you knows - s'only fair, what I suffers; like the good Lord says, is penance, it is. I know my crimes, Mister. Don' you go sayin' you know better – you don' know a pittance when you sees one!"

Watson backed up quickly, more to avoid being touched by the festering filth of the wash rag than anything else, but her words hit him harder than her hand ever could have. He flashed onto a remembrance of Holmes apologizing for making Watson care about him, for corrupting him by making a friend out of him. "Dear Lord," Watson breathed.

"The Lord don' come down 'ere no more, Mister. We's only got ourselfs ta look to 'ere."

"I…yes, of course. My apologies, madam." Watson had no real notion of whether or not his response was appropriate to this situation, but he imagined that he could hardly make things worse at this point. "Mrs. Kirkpatrick, I implore you…" He wanted out of this rotten place, but for all the mental disturbance he had already suffered, he had not yet fulfilled his purpose for coming here. "I only want to know who your husband was working for. Not Redding or Williams. There was a gentleman, a…a sponsor, if you will. He hired your husband and his friends to do a job – to assault a gentleman near the Punch Bowl, where your husband went to gamble on the boxing matches. Do you know anything of it?"

Adelaide's eyes narrowed, suspicion swimming in a glint of madness in her eyes. "My 'usband didn' assault nobody. I know 'e stole an' he did some other things what honest men don' do, but 'e never assaulted no gen'lman. I told that ta them Bobs when they was 'ere before, puttin' 'im in darbies, an' I'll tell you too. My 'usband's a good man! If 'e ever did anything wrong, it was us what drove 'im to it. Yew should be arrestin' us, not 'im."

Watson really had no response for that. She was stark, raving mad, just as Cutter had warned him. Abused and corrupted by a cruel life and a worse husband, beaten often enough by him to leave her nose permanently crooked and several of her fingers bent at unnatural angles. Convinced by virtue of this deplorable treatment that her husband's crimes – his cruelties to her, his abuse, his other myriad criminal acts – were her fault, for making him love her. She was so deluded that she couldn't even see how little resemblance his treatment actually bore to any kind of love that any sane person would recognize. And it was so like what Holmes had said to him, that Holmes had perverted Watson's innocent affections and made a criminal of him by it.

The comparison was like a slap, and Watson found himself wondering how Holmes could have come by such a mindset. Yes, the assault he had been subjected to had been brutal and scarring, but this kind of perversion of the ego took years to develop. The attack may have been a catalyst for Holmes, to lead him to this end result, but the seeds of it would have had to have been planted long before that. When, Watson wondered. Was it him? Had his dismissive tendencies, his criticisms, his treatment of his dearest friend set Holmes on this road, or had he been on it before they met? What must Holmes have suffered, either from others or from the torment of his own mind, to drive him down the same path as this long-ill-treated woman, to believe himself so unworthy?

"I, um…I understand, of course." Watson wanted out of this place like nothing else – more, even, than he had wanted out of that last horrific battle after it all went wrong in Afghanistan. At least at Maiwand, he had been in possession of a weapon – at least his bullets could theoretically protect him from the enemy. How was he supposed to defend himself from this madness? He could hardly shoot this woman to remove the formless threat that her very existence seemed to press on him. "Please, just tell me: did he have an employer? Did he ever speak of a gentleman benefactor? Did he ever mention any jobs that he had been paid for?"

Adelaide sneered at him and turned her back. "If 'e had a genl'man payin' 'im, 'e never said nuffin' to me. Anyways, Patty wasn' no fool. He didn' take no jobs from no toffs; them's not ta be trusted, an' Patty didn' go mixin' in things what weren't his. Tha's a right way ta gettin' put in the Thames, Mister; nobody cares if us griddlers turn up missin' in the mornin'. We gots ta be careful 'bout our business."

Watson nodded and breathed through his mouth to reduce the effects of the foul odors surrounding him. "What about money? Did he bring home anything unusual in the past month or two? Did he go to any unusual expense in that time?"

Adelaide scrubbed at the dirt that was most likely a part of the table by now. "No."

"Are you certain?" Watson pressed. Her short answer could either be a sign of dissemblance, or of her continued hostility toward him; he could not tell which.

The rag went flying to land in a heap on the floor in front of the stove. Adelaide whirled around, her hands on her hips, and demanded, "Why? So's you can take it from us? You ain't gettin' nuffin' from me! What I gots is mine, you 'ear?"

Watson held his hands up in a mollifying gesture. "I assure you, I don't want to take anything from you. I only want information."

"Yeah, well yew can take what you want and sod it!" Adelaide picked up a spoon from the sideboard and flicked it at him. "Go on, git! I've enough to worry about wiffout yer pryin' and wantin'. I ain't got nuffin'! My 'usband's in the lurch an' I ain't got enuff fer a bread load wiff what 'e left us! You think you 'ave wants, Mister? You try livin' like we do!"

Watson had already passed the door jamb when he finally realized that Adelaide had driven him backwards and out of the building. He caught his footing before he fell off the stairs at the stoop, and nodded, his hands held away and empty to demonstrate his harmlessness. "I am sorry to have troubled you, madam. I assure you, I meant no harm." He fished in his overcoat pocket and took out one of his cards. "If you remember anything about a gentleman, or if you hear about one, you can contact me here." He held the card out hopefully, but eyed the spoon wielded against him with a wary eye. When Adelaide made no move to take the card, Watson added, "Please. There's money in it for you, if the information you bring is good."

Adelaide's face twisted again, this time in more than just suspicion. Hope of that desperate a caliber was an unexpectedly ugly thing on a face so worn. "How much money?"

"That depends on the quality of your information." Watson waved the card again and breathed an inward sigh of relief when she took it.

After studying the card for several seconds with a puzzled frown, Adelaide confessed, "I ain't never learned no letters."

It took a moment for Watson to realize that she was confessing illiteracy. He should have expected that; most people in these straights were uneducated – that was how they ended up in such hopeless dead ends in the first place. "Cavendish," Watson told her. "Take it to the telegram office in Cavendish and they'll tell you where to go."

Adelaide glowered some more and then secreted the card away in a fold of her clothes that may or may not have concealed a proper pocket. "Fine. Now git lost. We ain't got no use fer no Nancy-dress layabouts in 'ere."

Watson opened his mouth to bid her good day, only to have the door slammed in his face. He grimaced instead and turned to pick his way back to the open sewer that passed for a street in Hoxton. A distressingly large number of hostile glares followed his dignified if hasty retreat. He had two more stops to make before returning home: the unfortunate flower girl, and the beggared blacksmith who had entered statements on the attack into the police record. They should be easy enough to find.

He had to walk back to the vicinity of the Punch Bowl, as no cabbie in their right mind frequented Hoxton for honest fares. Or for dishonest ones, for that matter. Just as he finally spotted the beggar, however, Watson was waylaid by an errand boy, one who did not appear to be one of Holmes' irregulars. The child shoved a folded note into Watson's hand which simply read: _The Diogenes Club. Come at once. I have Sherlock here. M_. A post-script read: _Tip the boy._

Any thought of interrogating the beggar fled from Watson's mind.

* * *

"Did my brother ever tell you about our parents, Doctor?"

Watson missed a step in his pacing, aware that his behavior could only be called rude and yet unable make himself settle in one place. He to wanted to find and throttle Lestrade for being such a witless boar, and then he wanted to confirm to his own satisfaction that Holmes was truly alright after fainting dead away from shock in Lestrade's office.

Mycroft had been waiting for him in the foyer when his cab arrived, then led him directly up to the Strangers Room with little explanation except that Lestrade had contacted Mycroft when it became apparent that Watson would not be easily found. Though Mycroft had confirmed that Sherlock was here and resting well under the influence of a dose of chloral, he would not allow Watson to go to him. He had insisted that they have a conversation first, as if Watson could possibly concentrate on the social arts in this instant. Then again, perhaps that was the point, and Mycroft aimed to keep him rattled in order to elicit more honest, less calculated responses. Only a Holmes would do such a cruel thing at a time like this, and all for a conversational leverage that Watson had no intention of granting. And that beside the fact that Watson was not capable of the sort of duplicity or subterfuge that this sort of gambit was designed to undermine.

"Doctor Watson?"

Watson stopped abruptly to recall the question, scanned the room, and then forced himself to keep an even pace as he approached the chair opposite Mycroft's ungainly, seated form. "No," Watson replied, his tone clipped into as much civility as he could manage just then. "He has mentioned that his mother died in an asylum – that she suffered from a nervous hysteria coupled with delusions – but that is all. It was never a subject he seemed inclined to discuss."

"Well, of course not," Mycroft grumbled. He gestured to a brandy snifter on the table at Watson's right hand, a twin to the one that he himself paused to sip from. "Sherlock was very young when the extent of her illness became apparent; I imagine that he has few pleasant memories of any of us from those days."

Watson shut his eyes long enough to contain the desire to either roll them or glare, his jaw clenched for a moment, and then he picked up the brandy that had been left for him. "Forgive me, sir, but what has this to do with your brother's current condition?"

To all intents, Mycroft ignored this question, but Watson knew him through Sherlock as a man who ever only approached a question from the side. His answers may have been oblique, but they were still answers. "Our father was a landed gentleman. Nothing too extravagant, of course; too many years had passed between the titling of our ancestors and his inheritance of the estate. We lived comfortably enough as commoners, wealthy in comparison to many. Father wed a French woman he had met in his travels – a niece of Emile Vernet. You may have heard of him?"

"Holmes has mentioned his French connection before."

Mycroft nodded and settled his bulk like a great seal rolling more deeply into an indent shaped in wet sand. "She was his second wife, actually, his first having died childless of a wasting illness not two years into their marriage."

Impatient now, Watson interjected with, "Mister Holmes, I really do not see how this is relevant. You tell me that Holmes has suffered a shock, that he is sedated because of it. I am Holmes' personal physician, besides being his friend. My place, right now, is with him, not sitting about drinking brandy - "

"Mother was given to delusion, but our father knew that when he met her."

Watson bit his tongue and nodded with a modicum of civility since dissuading Mycroft from his narrative would be akin to trying to stop Sherlock from going at his chemistry paraphernalia in a manic fit. And he doubted that he would be either able or permitted to find Sherlock in this labyrinth of a club without Mycroft to guide him.

"It was always a harmless thing; at times, I suspect that he was a bit charmed by it. It made her unique, gave her an unusual perspective. She was shrewd in business matters, even more so than father; he consulted her without shame, and blamed her insights on some unfathomable gift of the slightly maddened mind. It was a ridiculously romantic notion; he would have done better to think on the matter rationally and see that she was simply not well."

"That is very unfortunate," Watson offered, wary now. Surely, Mycroft could not mean to draw comparisons between the inherited madness of the Holmes matron, and Sherlock's very understandable, lingering symptoms of mental trauma.

"Sherlock came by his observational abilities from her, you see; it was she who taught him to deduce from a man's appearance so well that he could then judge an entire character by it. She would memorize the exact placement of objects in a room, her spacial senses downright frightening. If anything was moved even an inch from its assigned position, she would fall into hysterics and lock herself away in her room. I suspect that Sherlock, being of a very young and impressionable age, absorbed much of this peculiarity from her. Even as a child of five, he was ever nudging things back into their proper places so that she would not become alarmed by their shifting about in the normal course of daily affairs." He paused to study the light refracted through the crystal of his glass, his aloof façade showing wear. "His memory was a remarkable thing, Doctor Watson. A boy that young, possessed of a recall of such precision..."

"Your brother is one of the most intelligent men I know," Watson offered, more to break what looked to be an unintentional slide into a brooding silence, than because he felt it needed to be said.

"Yes," Mycroft agreed, the word ponderous as it rolled from his tongue. "Yes, he is quite brilliant, indeed." He shifted and seemed to startle himself back to his primary topic; it was a most peculiar mannerism to observe in Mycroft, of all people, who may occasionally fall asleep when not properly stimulated by his surroundings, but who never simply wandered away in his waking thoughts. "Mother never spoke of her delusions in company, though our father and I could always tell when she was listening to something not in the room. Some of her friends insisted that she spoke with spirits, but even mummy denied that. She knew enough, at least, to say that what she saw and heard were not spirits, and she knew very well that none but her would ever see them."

Watson swirled his drink about the glass twice, clockwise, and ventured a sip. Expensive brandy, that much was obvious. Of course, it would have been ridiculous to believe that Mycroft indulged in anything but the best. Against his will, Watson's professional curiosity had been peaked and he asked, "She was lucid in her madness, then?"

"In the beginning, yes," Mycroft replied, his eyes distant and his hands quiet around the brandy snifter. "Or so we always thought. We came to learn later that she was ever telling Sherlock about the invisible men. How they were all around us, touching things and moving things just enough that she always knew they had been there, but never enough that anyone else would notice. How they disordered the evenly swept nap of the carpet as they passed with footprints that she insisted matched no shoe in the house. How if a trinket turned up missing, it could only be in their possession, to be squirreled away in a cubbyhole somewhere, never to be seen again. She told him how clever they were, how they made bad things happen around them as if ill events were drawn to them through an unseen ether, like fog suctioned by a draft to flow through a crack in a door." He paused, quietly disturbed by his remembrances, and finished, "How they would one day come for Sherlock." Mycroft sucked in an emotionally laden breath as his eyes came to rest on his drink. "She terrorized the poor boy from the time he could talk until his seventh year. We never had an inkling."

Watson swallowed and turned his attention to a more healthy drought of the very fine brandy in his glass. "What happened in his seventh year to put an end to it?"

"She murdered our father."

Mycroft did not mark Watson's sharp inhalation, nor react to his sudden stare; he seemed not to be entirely present at the moment, and Watson found himself chilled. One thing he had learned about the Holmes brothers is that they were always firmly entrenched in the present – they were aware of the living moment to a startling and sometimes terrifying degree – it was the source of their deductive gifts. Perhaps it was also the source of what had driven their mother to madness. Far too many times, Watson had seen Sherlock overwhelmed to the point of immobility by too stimulating, too busy a scene. Overly crowded restaurants, the deafening din of a crowd on the Strand... Sherlock could not retreat from the stark, present moment as others could. How much more notice would he have to take to be driven mad by an abundance of detail?

His eyes trained unblinking on the fire, Mycroft droned absently on. "She used arsenic, of all things. I was away at school when it happened. She mixed it into the sugar bowl. You see, every morning without fail, our father consumed two cups of the strongest brew of coffee that the cook could manage. It was so strong that he needed six spoons of sugar to make it palatable." Mycroft paused, his eyes unfocusing. "He never noticed the taste, his coffee being so very bitter to begin with."

"Dear god in heaven."

"The cause of death was determined quickly, of course; it was not a subtle affair. The arsenic was traced back to the sugar, and our mother made no effort whatsoever to conceal her guilt. She told all and sundry that the invisible men had made her do it – that they had threatened to harm Sherlock if she did not kill her husband."

Watson gulped another sip of the brandy and then looked up to find Mycroft watching him. "How did Sherlock take this?"

Again, Mycroft ignored the direct answer and continued his narrative. "Even as the doctors dragged her away from the house, she was screaming to Sherlock that they would come for him one day. And that when they did, no one would be able to see them but him, and no matter who he told, no one would help him just as no one had helped her, because they were the only ones who could see them."

Without conscious volition, Watson began shaking his head in negation of the utter horror he had just been told. "I do not understand why you are telling me this now." And yet, one traitorous corner of his mind held to the notion of the heredity of certain forms of madness, a catalogue of Holmes' most inexplicable and irritating habits listing themselves out within the quiet confines of his mind to be held up against this new information.

Old leather gave an ominous creak and Mycroft sat forward in his chair, his brandy discarded on the side table. He looked…frightened. Mycroft Holmes actually _looked_ frightened. "Doctor Watson, when I went to the Yard to retrieve my brother, he said only one thing to me before the physician on duty gave him chloral to make him sleep. 'Mycroft,' he said, 'I saw an invisible man. You must tell them that he is real.'"

Watson stared, his eyes wide and dry in the stuffiness of the room. Then he propelled himself back to his feet and negated that with every appropriate gesture available. "No. Sherlock is not mad; I would know it if he were. He has been under a great deal of stress these past two months, and Lestrade had just delivered him an unwarranted shock. I highly doubt that he was himself when he said that."

"I took the liberty of inquiring after the precipitating situation. I understand that there was a fight in any alleyway near Canal Street, that my brother was mugged and beaten. Inspector Lestrade – "

"Inspector Lestrade should learn to keep his mouth shut on his unfounded suppositions!" Watson slammed the brandy snifter onto the surface of the sideboard, where it miraculously did not break. "I am aware of his theories, and damn him for a pinchcock for repeating such _drivel_ to Holmes' face! He is _wrong_, and I will have his arse in a sling for upsetting _my friend_!"

Mycroft appeared taken aback by his fury, and then he picked at the edge of his empty glass before discarding it. Without making eye contact – as if he were physically unable to do so for the fear of what truths he might read in Watson's person beyond the words he might speak aloud – Mycroft said very softly, "Swear to me that you believe that, and I will take it as divine truth, Doctor. Because from where I am sitting, he looks to be more his mother's son than I ever dreaded in my worst imaginings."

Watson trembled in place for a long moment, wresting his profession about himself like a cloak since his rationale had fled along with his calm. "You said mugged and beaten. The truth was far worse, Mister Holmes, and I will not speak of it any further to you without Sherlock's express consent. Suffice it to say that he suffered a great trauma both physically and mentally, and _Inspector_ – " He could hardly keep from spraying spittle as he snarled the title into the expectant silence – "Lestrade believes that this makes him an unreliable eyewitness to his own assault. He cannot see the facts for what they are, and he will not interpret what evidence he has in any way save one – "

"He states that the evidence points irrevocably to only three assailants."

"As if he would know the difference!" A deep, steady breath served to gloss over the instant in which Watson nearly told off Holmes' brother in the most impolite manner possible. "Lestrade is good at what he does, but he is not of Holmes' caliber; that is a simple fact. The evidence is not conclusive. There is positive proof of three perpetrators, but there is no proof that a fourth did not exist."

"And you have logical arguments for your belief in a fourth perpetrator?"

"One cannot positively prove a negative," Watson retorted, and he was right about that much at least. "Not even Lestrade at his most convoluted 'deducting' could manage that, so yes, I have a logical reason for continuing to take Holmes' account as true. The testimony that Lestrade_ does_ have is biased, and certain of the witnesses could easily have been bought for various reasons."

"Such as?"

"The pattern of criminal behavior was established by interviewing…" Watson nearly said _sodomites_, but that would give too much away. Halting in his speech, he continued. "…by interviewing men of a criminal turn themselves; if their activities were known, their livelihoods would be ruined and their freedom very likely forfeit. They could easily have been persuaded to maintain a fiction by someone with an interest in damaging Sherlock's credibility."

"But there is no actual evidence of tampering," Mycroft pointed out. "And from what I have been told, no case or undertaking to precipitate such a crime in the interests of discrediting my brother."

Watson nodded, reluctant to concede that point, but it _was_ a true statement. "There is no evidence solidly against it, either; there were no direct witnesses."

"Was it not you who just pointed out the impossibility of proving negatives?" Mycroft asked sharply. "Lack of evidence against a thing does not translate into a proof of its opposite."

"And what would you have me do?" Watson demanded, his face heated both by his outburst and by the brandy he had consumed. "Conclude that Sherlock's mind - his greatest asset, the one thing that he values above all else - has failed him? That he is mad, that - that he is seeing _invisible men_?" He shook his head, hard. "I am not ready to believe that. If he is right, and there _is_ a fourth man, where does that leave him?"

Mycroft remained silent for several breaths, and then sighed in concession. "Alone, and in danger." He pushed himself to his feet and Watson exerted a tremendous will to remaining still in the grip of his lingering anger. "Doctor Watson."

Startled by the nearness of the voice, Watson retreated even as he turned to find that Mycroft had come close enough to touch him. "Yes?"

Delicately, Mycroft looked to one side, and Watson wondered how he ever could have thought this man inscrutable. "When you say worse…"

"I'll not betray his privacy." Watson crossed his arms with finality. "Not even for you, sir."

Mycroft lifted a hand to his watch chain – that most compulsive of his habits, knowing the exact time at all times – and studied the face with more intent than he needed to confirm the hour. "After our father's death, an uncle came from France to stay at the estate and look after Sherlock's interests. I was too busy with my education to bother with the inheritance I received, beyond using it to pay for my studies, and I...did not like to return home even when I had the opportunity. I never had, truth be told. Even discounting our mother's eccentricities and the strain that her presence could cause when she gave into the fits of paranoia, that house had always been…disquieting, for lack of a better term. A more poetic sort might say that something of the sickness of mother's mind had imprinted itself in the stonework and the walls – that delusion or not, the invisible men had left their poisonous mark in that place through her."

Uneasy now, Watson shifted, one hand twitching in an aborted impulse to reach out and comfort. He would not impose in such a manner, however; Mycroft was not like his brother, and Watson had no right to take liberties. Hoping to startle Mycroft from this contemplative fugue, Watson said, "Mister Holmes, perhaps we should go see to your brother now."

Mycroft ignored him, and it occurred to Watson that the elder Holmes was a very isolated creature. There was a very real possibility that he had never spoken of these things aloud to anyone before. "The result of my disinterest was that I had scant contact with my brother for the majority of his childhood. I was away at school by the time he was three, and after Mummy's funeral, I did not even visit during holidays. When Sherlock was thirteen, he ran away. No one informed me at the time." His gaze unfocused and slanted to the left. "I suppose that they imagined I would not care, as I never had before then. In any case, nearly six months later, Sherlock appeared on my doorstep at Downing College, Cambridge, where I attended university."

"Perhaps it would be best to leave this conversation for now." Watson stepped nearer, his fingers gripping more tightly at the empty brandy snifter. "The day's events have been trying, I am sure." When Mycroft ticked back into the present and looked up to meet Watson's gaze, Watson pressed, "You are surely not yourself at the moment. Pray, leave this until you are less…" _…upset_ was what he had meant to say, but looking Mycroft in the eye now, he could see that this was not the case at all. Mycroft was not addled by an excess of emotion, and he was not babbling out of some haunting sense of nostalgia. He was perfectly lucid and calm, and these utterings were purposefully done. He was not likely to later regret giving away his confidences.

"It was the middle of winter," Mycroft continued, his manner direct now that he could see Watson's attentiveness. There was a reason for this, a calculated reason why he wanted Watson to know these things. What those reasons might be, Watson could not yet tell. Mycroft simply ignored the flash of puzzlement that no doubt shone on Watson's face, and went on with his narrative. "He had nothing on his person save the clothes he had worn when he left and his violin clutched to his chest." His steady gaze wavered and Watson caught a glimpse of something almost like sorrow in the grey of his eyes. "He was half starved and filthy, wearing a threadbare old coat that had once belonged to our father, his violin bow broken in half in his pocket. I could never get him to tell me why he left home; he only begged me to provide him with a new bow, and after I had agreed to do so, he asked me very calmly not to send him back. I gave him my word that I would not."

Watson's eyes narrowed. "The uncle – "

"Never laid a hand on him, I assure you." Mycroft smiled sadly. "I _do_ care enough, good Doctor, to have made very certain of that."

"Then…if the environment was not damaging, why…?"

"Why did he leave? Why was he so adamant that he not be returned?" Mycroft shrugged, a motion of one shoulder and the flip of its opposite hand, more a gesture of regret than dismissiveness. "I have suspicions, of course, but nothing substantiated by fact or even hearsay. And until I know for certain, I will accede to his wishes and simply keep him near, where I at least know that he is well looked after." That old shadow in Mycroft's face hardened, and he looked every inch a Holmes. "I have not contacted any other member of our family for nearly thirty years, Doctor Watson. I even abandoned what remained of both of our inheritances to avoid being tracked down through the money. I was barely a man at the time, and frankly terrified that if I retained any connection to our family, then someone would suspect that I had Sherlock in my keeping, and come to take him from me. I broke off my studies within a week of his arrival, and then we traveled here, to London."

Watson flicked a glance at the dying fire laid in pale embers in the grate, and ventured, "You make it sound as if he had done something wrong, something to make him flee."

"He may have," Mycroft conceded. "But I rather believe that his nature merely unsettled the wrong sort of people." A grin surfaced to run along the poorly defined line of his jaw. "He ever saw too much, too clearly, you know, and could not help himself blathering it all out in company. Discretion has been a learned response."

Watson answered Mycroft's grin with an unexpected smile of his own, remembering Holmes' deduction of Watson's pocket watch at the beginning of their acquaintance, and the manner in which Watson's temper had immediately gotten the better of him.

Mycroft's amusement failed him a breath later, and Watson watched the gradual appearance of that same brand of melancholia that he often observed plaguing Sherlock. "It was too late, though, by the time he finally made it to my door. Sherlock loved me and he came to me, but to judge by his appearance at the time, he only did so out of desperation, after all other avenues open to him had failed. He had ceased to trust me, if he ever had. And...he was not the same anymore. I could keep him safe and I could see to his education, but I have never been able to truly help him. For all my insight and my knowledge, I have not the faintest sense of how I let my brother down; I only know that somehow, I did. I have grieved that much ever since." He narrowed his eyes to best observe Watson's reaction, and then remarked, "Surely, you understand my position? I cannot assist my brother if I am not made fully aware of the facts of the matter."

Ah, yes, and there it was - that manipulative streak which Holmes always claimed Mycroft lived by. The purpose of this tete-a-tete was to elicit sympathy, perhaps empathy, and thereby induce Watson to reveal the information he sought. Watson nodded in response, but not in capitulation. "It is because of my understanding that I will not break my confidence with your brother; he would not appreciate such an indiscretion, and I am not willing to further damage my relationship with him simply to satisfy your need for atonement. Surely _you_ can understand _my_ position."

"I see," Mycroft breathed. For the barest heartbeat, Watson felt menaced even though he knew that Mycroft would not strike out physically against him. Not with potential witnesses as close as the next room, at least. "It was that bad, then."

A faint tendril of unease wended its way through Watson's abdomen, drawing his eyes downward to break the tension building between them. "I once failed a brother through my absence as well, Mister Holmes. But unlike you, I did not learn the lesson the first time 'round." On the surface, it was James to whom he referred, drinking himself to death and the rest of the Watson family into squalor while John played hero in foreign lands. But the image of his long dead brother paled beside the ones that Mycroft's words had evoked. Watson playing family with Mary while Holmes investigated a dangerous criminal empire with no one at his back, Watson leaving to treat an English patient in a Swiss village while Holmes waited beside a waterfall…dozing at home is his chair by the fire while Holmes counted buttons in an alley and cried.

Softly, as if he could tell the true direction of Watson's thoughts, and how he wavered – and he was a Holmes, so he probably could at that – Mycroft said, "He is my brother too, John Watson. In spite of the difficulties his nature has caused, I only ever wanted to see him well."

Watson raised his head, eyes sharp with unwelcome moisture born of both sorrow and outrage. He knew that he was being played like a cheap fiddle, and oh, what a master the elder Holmes could be. To hold up the bond that Watson shared with Holmes and pervert it to serve in this emotional blackmail... Watson nearly said as much – nearly let his tongue spout the foul words that clamored behind his tongue for release. And yet…

And yet. Mycroft did not wear the face of a counterfeit artist trying to pry secrets through subterfuge and skilled words. He wore the weary face of a worried and beaten old man. Let others say what they like about the Holmes brood; Mycroft did love his brother.

His nostrils flared and swollen, voice a shivering live thing in the quiet of the hearth-warmed room, Watson steadied his gaze on Mycroft's and hoped to god that Holmes would forgive him for this. "Four men set on him outside a boxing establishment. They dragged him into an alley, took everything of value from his person, held him to the ground, and used him like a common whore. When they were through, they gave him back the money they had taken and told him that it was payment for services rendered." His voice had ceased to come evenly halfway through, but he persevered, and his gaze remained steadfast. "When he came home, all he could talk about were the number of buttons he had counted on their persons. He insisted that he should not have thrown the money away because our rent was coming due. He apol—" Watson's throat closed and he cursed himself in silence for this sign of weakness. A brutal stamping of his bad leg served to dislodge the obstacle, but it also jerked his eyes down and his lids closed over the sight of Mycroft's hand trembling where it still gripped the open pocket watch. "He apologized. For upsetting me with his injuries. He apologized for making me care that he was hurt, for worrying me. He insisted on replacing the shirt he was wearing when it happened because it was my shirt he had borrowed for the evening. He—"

That time, when Watson's throat closed to strangle his words, it stayed closed, and Watson let it. There was no need for more, he could practically hear how Mycroft's heart strained to imitate the metronomic tick of his exposed pocket watched in doubled time. Moisture welled behind Watson's tightly clenched eyelids, but he refused to let it run free. He needed his composure. He needed to find Holmes and assess the damage that Lestrade had done, and then he needed to get them both home to where the outside world could not touch them. He needed to be away from this overlarge man who even now retreated with stumbling steps to collapse his untenable bulk into the nearest chair, lest his legs give out beneath him.

"Where is he?" Watson demanded with what vocal force he had left.

"I…I had him taken to a private room. My private room. Upstairs. I…I will take you there."

"My gratitude," Watson bit out, his jaw clenched to further assist in the containment of his fury and his unshed tears. "For keeping him safe." He meant that as thanks for more than just this afternoon, though he didn't realize the additional meaning until after the echo of the words had died in the far corners of the room.

From somewhere near the heavily curtained windows, Mycroft could be heard heaving his bulk from whatever ill-fitting chair he had found himself in urgent need of. Then a shattering of crystal broke the stifled atmosphere that had fallen like a pall over the room as Mycroft heaved his brandy snifter at the wall with all of his considerable might. The outburst ended there; Mycroft had never been a dramatic type. "Doctor Watson."

Watson drew a fortifying breath and then looked up at Mycroft.

"I find threats to be tedious, you know. They are so often idle and ineffective."

Watson drew his head back, but the rest of him remained frozen in sudden apprehension.

"My brother is very dear to me. It is distressing to learn of an event such as this in so startling a manner. And so long after the fact that there is little left for me to do about it." Mycroft raised his eyes from a farcical display of nonchalant consultation of his timepiece. "I trust we understand each other."

He knew that Mycroft was quite serious in his menace; Watson also knew, via some ineffable understanding of the Holmes mindset, that Mycroft would not make such a statement if he did not have the resources to make good on his implications. The smirk made its way onto Watson's face anyway. It was not a mirthful expression – in fact, it was quite as joyless as the dark place that Watson had reserved in his mind to store all of the things he most wished to forget about the past two months. "Mister Holmes. If you truly believed that my holding of your brother's confidence were a transgression, then I doubt we would have partaken of any part of this conversation at all."

Mycroft appeared smug for a moment, but only for a moment. Then he affected his amiable exterior once again. "You really are quite a lot brighter than your sensationalistic stories imply. And loyalty to my brother can only ever serve to reassure me." The companionability faded away in the next heartbeat, and his voice dropped to a whisper. "You will take the very best care of him." It was not a command, nor even a question; Mycroft stated it as a simple, empirical fact. "He will allow you the liberty because he gives his trust to no other, but remember that I care for him too. I do not wish to learn of such a misfortune through another chance of your absence in a time of emergent need. I have spent these three hours past, sitting in here and drinking far more brandy than is wise for a man of my constitution, convinced that my Sherlock had slipped away without even my barest notice – that by my unknowing neglect three and more decades past, I had somehow helped to drive him there myself. I could think only of that ragged boy who arrived on my doorstep with a violin cradled in his arms like something precious, asking me for a new bow before he dared ask for my protection. I will beg you only this once: do not do that to me again, John Watson. It was a cruel thing to endure."

Watson watched the subtle play of Mycroft's features, the concealment of common emotion that seemed second nature to both him and his brother. More, perhaps, to Sherlock, if he were being honest. Mycroft did feel, openly if in a reserved fashion, and he empathized quite easily. Sherlock…well, he felt, but not very well, and his empathy was a peculiar thing at best.

"I cannot swear to that, Mister Holmes," Watson replied with candor. "He is my very dearest friend, you see. I would protect him even against you, sir."

"Yes, I can see that much quite clearly," Mycroft replied, and seemed almost…wistful. "You look to my brother's best interests first. As it should be, dear boy. He is fortunate in his friend."

Watson really didn't know what to say to that, as he doubted that he truly deserved such high regard from either of the Holmes brothers. He merely offered a noncommittal nod in acknowledgement of the words themselves, if not of their truth, and waited for Mycroft to lead the way from the room.

* * *

The world was calm again when Holmes woke – muffled and muted like a head stuck under a pillow at dawn, and warm like Watson's oldest quilt. He peeled his eyes open to find himself lying on a settee in a dim, well-appointed sitting room. From the smell of hearth fires and finery, he was no longer at Scotland Yard. Neither was he home at Baker Street, but he did know this place, he was certain of it. He turned his head, his neck protesting like the rusted hinges of an old garden gate, and spied more furniture arranged in a crescent around a hearthstove, the grate open and glowing with banked coals. A wall sconce set high on the wall near one of the room's two closed doors glowed brightly enough behind a dark shade that Holmes recognized it for a vapourlamp rather than an oil lamp.

This did nothing to help clarify his location as most buildings in London within a certain radius of Scotland Yard, and even most domiciles within walking distance, had gas laid in, so he dismissed the fact as irrelevant. This was a strange room, by appearance more a sitting room or a private study than anything else, and yet the presence of a stove and the kettle set to gently heat on top implied some form of at least temporary residence. There was no proper kitchen, however, and no bed as one would find at an inn. The size of the room was suggestive of a private flat for those of small means, such as the many that Holmes rented throughout London for his work, and yet the richness of the décor precluded that this was such a place.

Several more minutes of observation, bleared through the effects of the chloral he had been given by the physician at the Yard, yielded nothing that his mind could fix upon as significant. He was still very tired, though, so perhaps if he waited a spell and then tried again, he would find himself better equipped to deduce his location. A glass of water would no doubt hasten the process, and Holmes could hardly swallow for the dryness of his throat. He had noted a carafe sitting in stillness on a dry sink in the farthest corner of the room, a scattering of moisture smeared along its lip winking in the light of the single lamp.

Holmes pushed at the rug draped over his torso until it fell with a dull thump to the floor. His fingers felt overlarge and foreign to his person, and would not grasp the edge of the cushion beneath him when he tried to pull himself upright. Desperate for the water to wet his throat, Holmes rolled carefully to the floor and found himself pressing his heavy head into the rug that he had just discarded. Blackness danced before his eyes, threatening a return to oblivion. His own concoctions never treated him thus – they were there, and then they wore off; at most, he dealt with the aftereffects for some span of days, but never did they linger within in him like this, trying to reassert their hold. Chloral was a horrible drug, he decided. He would instruct Watson to keep it from him in future.

In the mean time, Holmes managed to prop himself on wobbling arms, the majority of his weight relegated to the legs folded uselessly beneath him. He did not really care what he looked like when he began crawling across the floor like a drunken victim of palsy; he was so terribly thirsty, and they should not have left him alone so far from the water to begin with. It was uncivilized.

The door farthest from the light cracked open enough that Holmes perceived the movement, but he could see no shape in the darkness beyond. "A draft," he pronounced, and winced when the slur of his voice reached his ears. He could barely retain enough coordination to complete his journey across the room. When his knuckles rapped against the cabinet door of the dry sink, he clawed his way up on his knees to reach the ewer taunting him from above.

Just as his fingers closed on the handle, someone snatched it from him and moved it from his field of vision. "Allow me. You're in no shape to handle this yourself."

Holmes slumped back toward the floor and twisted as he settled to face halfway toward his benefactor. His head thumped back against the soft wood of the sink as he panted to catch his breath after the effort of crossing the room, and he wondered how much longer this infernal drug would addle his body. He tried to focus on the man pouring water into a glass for him, but his vision would not resolve into crisp enough lines for him to see anything other than the shadow of a body blocking out a swath of the lamplight above him. The sound of water swirling from the ewer immediately attracted the remainder of his attention. He reached toward the man, his own hand entering his field of vision as an unsubstantiated mirage shimmering from afar. His fingers struck thick woolen trouser fibers. With a great deal of effort, he mumbled, "…very kind."

"Not at all, Mister Holmes," the man replied softly.

The thin clink of the ewer being placed back in its bowl roused Holmes from an unintended lapse into slumber. Infernal drug. He lifted eyelids grown unwieldy with artificial fatigue, eyes widening in vain to better see his benefactor, though his pupils would not dilate to allow him any degree of clarity in the low light.

A glass of sparkling water drifted into his field of vision, but hovered just beyond reach. "I'll assist you, shall I?"

Holding the glass himself was beyond him at the moment. In other circumstances, Holmes would simply defer drinking until he was more able, but the thirst was overwhelming. He allowed himself to be pulled more firmly upright, the man settling at his back to hold him in place, and wrapped his hands over the man's on the glass even though his effort was extraneous. It was his benefactor's strength which raised the glass to his lips and held it steady while Holmes sucked at the needed moisture like a sick lamb, his head lolling sideways against the man's shoulder.

"Easy, now; you'll make yourself sick, dear fellow. Take a moment to breathe."

Holmes choked as he automatically obeyed while still sipping at the water. The glass pulled away and he tightened his grip over it only to find that he hadn't strength enough to even hinder its retreat. "No, please – " Holmes plucked at the man's sleeve in a vain bid to bring the wanted glass back to his lips. The room wavered in a wash of dizziness as he tried to move too quickly, and he fell back with a gasp for the nausea that the sensation produced.

The arm not holding the glass away from him tightened about his midsection. "Shh...there now. You've managed to make a mess of yourself, dear boy. Let me take care of it."

Holmes went deathly still, the fingers of one hand hooked purely by chance around the seam of a shirt cuff. Cuff links winked back at him, close and clear in spite of his uncooperative sight, monogrammed but unreadable through the familiar whorls and bands of discoloration tarnishing the silver like oil spreading along the surface of still water. In the darkness, he could see little of the handkerchief that the gentleman produced to dab the spilled water from his chin and neck. But the voice…

This was not right. He knew those cuff links – he would know them anywhere, in his sleep, for as long as he lived until someone bothered to clean them – but they did not belong to this man. They belonged to Right Arm Man – Holmes had seen them on him. And Right Arm Man was in the Yard. Watson had said so, had he not? Or Lestrade? One of them had – one of them must have actually said it at some point.

"I've been watching you, _mon pauvre innocent. _Imagine my surprise to find you walking about the halls of Scotland Yard. I almost didn't recognize you, but then, I saw very little of your face in the dark when we first met."

Holmes made a wordless sound and glanced at the door as if help might be found there. The tempo of his mind increased as he tried to make sense of what was happening, but the majority of his focus fixed immovably onto the cuff links. Their presence here, at this man's wrists, provided the most glaring discrepancy at the moment. They were very fine cuff links. Not silver plated but pure. No one of Right Arm Man's station would have possessed such an expensive pair of trinkets, and Holmes should have realized that long before now. If Right Arm Man had come by such a treasure, he would have sold them or gambled them away at the first opportunity. Unless he had stolen them from another mark and kept them as a trophy, but then how had they gotten here, to this man?

"I was very proud, you know." The handkerchief disappeared to whence it came, and then the hand returned to caress Holmes' jaw, to trace the column of his throat and flutter against the frantic pulsing of the blood in his neck. "It took a lot of courage to go there, to ask to see them. But then, I have never doubted your courage."

Holmes worked his throat to swallow, but his tongue would not function properly. The only response he could manage was a thin, helpless whine that seemed to come straight from his chest. The sedative properties of the chloral made it hard to breathe as his heart rate increased.

"I remember how you bore their abuse, how you survived so well for your dear Watson's sake. Does he know how you love him?"

Holmes jerked and sucked in a stuttered breath, his chest squeezing tight as his heart struggled to provide him with his life's blood in spite of the chloral polluting his body. "No - " He was not quite sure what he so frantically sought to deny by it.

"I heard you say his name so many times, dear boy. He brings you comfort, does he not? You trust him. You wanted him to come find you that night, to be there with you when it happened."

_To be there to stop them_, Holmes clarified in his mind. _Only to make them stop. _But the spoken words were sucked back down into Holmes' chest as he tried desperately to breathe without passing out.

"They were so cruel to you. And your John wasn't there to save you." Fourth Man crooned, warm and odorless breath puffing past Holmes' ear with each word. "They hurt you so much." He slipped his other arm around Holmes' waist to stroke at his stomach. "But I made it better, didn't I. He didn't come to you, but _I _did."

Holmes stiffened even further with the sort of terror he had never known before in his life. Where was Watson? Or Mycroft - he recalled seeing Mycroft earlier. This was certainly not Mycroft's domicile, so he must be at his brother's club. There should be people nearby. If he yelled, someone would come. His lungs refused to emit the air necessary to call for help.

"Do you remember how gentle I was?" Fingertips danced lower and Holmes tried to twist away from the way they dipped between his legs. "How good it felt?"

"Stop!" Dear heaven, was that his voice? A crack of a syllable, short-lived like the snap of a log burning in the fire, and nothing more. His throat was still too dry for proper speech, and he had been drugged - he might even still be asleep, and this just a sedative-induced dream. Yes, a figment. This was a figment. Any moment now, he would wake, just as he had last night. He would wake, and Watson would be there telling him that everything was all right and that he was safe now. And they would have tea, and Mrs Hudson would make eggs for their breakfast -

"You don't really want me to stop." A single finger traced a firm line along the soft shapes beneath Holmes' flies. "You want me to make it feel good again, not hurt like they did. You were so relaxed for me. So strong. And you break so beautifully."

Holmes twisted like an eel in Fourth Man's grasp only to have a hand clamped over his mouth in time to muffle his shout. He tried to thrash, but could put no force behind his blows, not still half-drugged as he was.

"Shh...calm down now, dear boy. We can't have them running in here and interrupting us, can we? How would that look, do you think?"

Holmes dug his fingernails into the hand plastered over his mouth, but the chloral had drawn all of the strength from his body; he could only shiver and squirm ineffectually against the arms restraining him like a dying fish desperately unable to breathe in the open air. No fish ever made the sounds that Holmes was making now, though.

"I mean, after all, if I wouldn't let anyone see us for your dear mummy's sake, what makes you think I would let them see us for yours?"

Such utter stillness could only ever shatter slowly, shiver apart like Tibetan sand art at the gentle trembling of the earth when the thunder breaks. His pulse rate shot up and fractured where it pounded in his ears and Holmes...couldn't breathe.

Lips ghosted along his ear, Fourth Man's breath a low purr in the encroaching darkness. "She warned you we'd come for you."

He squeezed his eyes shut.

~tbc~


	10. Chapter 10

"This way, Doctor." Mycroft gestured at the proper door and indicated that Watson should enter ahead of him.

Watson hesitated as Mycroft walked past him to consult in whispers with a servant stationed at the head of the rear staircase. Once Mycroft's body language indicated no cause for concern, Watson depressed the latch handle and pushed the door slowly open. The last thing he wanted to do was startle Holmes, or wake him if he still slept. He needed whatever rest he could get, after the disruption of the previous night.

A collection of cushions lay scattered in disarray on the floor before a large, overstuffed settee. Draped over the arm of a nearby chair were Holmes' frock coat and braces, his cravat neatly folded on a table beside them, the old, plain onyx tack that he favored visible as a faint glint on top of the smoothed fabric. Holmes himself was not immediately visible. "Holmes? It's just me, old boy. Are you in here?"

The shadows near the curtained window stirred, and Holmes craned his neck to peer out from behind a very large, maroon velvet wingback chair. "Ah! Watson. At last."

Watson took a step forward, then stopped for no immediately discernible reason. "Are you all right?"

"Yes, of course." Holmes nodded in that manner he had when upset and yet not able to realize his own state for himself – a twitchy nod, an unconvincing and blank smile accompanied by a tic of the muscles beneath his eyes, his expression guileless and yet also empty somehow. "I am fine, Watson. Is it time to go home?"

Watson pried his shoes from the carpet and finally made his way across the room to crouch before Holmes' chair. Holmes had furled himself up into the cushion with his feet braced at the edge of the seat and his knees tucked close to his body. A rug lay in puddles and pools about the folds of his person, hooked in elbows and over shoulders, and trailing down to drag a corner along the floor. Watson studied him for a moment with the utmost intent.

"Watson, could you happen to spare a cigarette? I am desperately in need of one."

Watson opened his mouth, blinked, then shook his head. "Yes, of course."

"My gratitude, my dear Watson." Holmes reached for the cigarette that Watson offered to him, but his aim seemed to be a bit off and his hand shook. Fatigue, most likely, from both the earlier shock and the sedative, perhaps compounded by the craving for tobacco. Holmes was in the habit of smoking far more in a day than he had been able to sustain of late; no doubt, the lack of it was starting to wear on his disposition.

"Here, old cock. You're liable to do yourself harm." Watson uncurled the fingers that Holmes had wrapped over his own on the cigarette in an attempt to take it, and lit it himself before offering the fag back. He had to place it directly into Holmes' fingers so that he did not fumble it.

Holmes managed a long draw, his face creasing and then smoothing out in bliss as he exhaled. He grimaced, however, at the aftertaste; Holmes had never been a fan of the Arcadia blend. "Ah, yes. I think that it is long past time I procured a new cigarette case. You have been most generous with your own."

"Think nothing of it, Holmes." Watson rocked back on his heels, shifting his weight to avoid unnecessary strain to his bad leg. He would purchase the new case himself at the earliest opportunity and call it an early yuletide gift. The fact that Holmes had finally referred to the loss of his old one in such plain terms was a matter to be celebrated, in Watson's opinion. Of course, he would never put it to Holmes in that manner. "Your brother should be joining us in just a moment. He needed to converse with one of the staff first."

Holmes brightened with that sort of forced, sickly inner light that Watson had often noted in terminal patients. "My brother is here? Marvelous! Perhaps he will join us for dinner."

Watson's optimism of just a moment ago fled. He could see the beginnings of a dangerous mania in the unnatural cheer of Holmes' exclamation. Perhaps wisely, he said nothing of the matter aloud.

The vacant smile on Holmes' face abruptly folded and then dissolved like lime beneath a stream of acid. His gaze skittered off into a corner and he puffed more vigorously on his cigarette, raising a ring of smoke all about his hair. "My head aches terribly, Watson."

"I doubt that the drug has worn completely off yet. Here - let me take a look at you." Watson raised a hand to Holmes' face, hesitating only to offer a reassuring smile in light of the flinch this engendered. "You've got a bit of dirt here." He traced over a very faint discoloration in the hollow of Holmes' right cheek, which did not smudge beneath his fingertip. Then his fingers moved with more surety to pull gently at the skin beneath Holmes' eyelid so that he could better examine the pupilation to determine his current level of intoxication. His eyes were bloodshot and glassy, which was to be expected after a recent administration of chloral, but the slight swelling of burst capillaries along the outer edges of Holmes' nostrils was not. That was more indicative of a momentary lack of sufficient air, such as in suffocation. Or, the beginning stages of it, anyway, such as when one person covers the nose and mouth of another, but stops before rendering the other unconscious. If Holmes had hyperventilated violently enough to render himself unconscious, he may have sustained such minor markings, but...

Holmes smelled wrong. Watson knew the brand of his pomade, his soap, his aftershave, and the various colognes he occasionally donned if they were to be mingling in company. He knew which blends of tobacco Holmes smoked depending on his mood, his caseload and his current level of disposable funds. Furthermore, they shared a bed, for god's sake. Whatever repercussions or implications that situation presented in a social context, it also meant that Watson was intimately familiar with the way Holmes smelled after either sleeping or being drugged nearly into a coma. They were not the same scent, and Holmes smelled of neither right now. The odor that Watson detected on him – of musk and an unpleasant, unfamiliar tobacco blend – did not belong on Holmes. And he had been awake for longer than the size of his pupils implied. He smelled of anxiety like a stressed animal, not of a recent waking and a sleepy stumble across the room to a chair.

A din of hushed voices sounded from the hall, foreign patter in the accustomed dead silence of the Diogenes Club, and then Mycroft pushed the door open widely enough to admit his person. The heavy oak clicked into its jamb in his wake. He really could move like a cat when the mood took him, weighted frame or not. "I have sent for biscuits and a fresh pot of tea." He stepped up to Sherlock's chair, his pocket watch open in his meaty palm though he was not studying it at present. "Ah, brother mine." Mycroft's voice was a deep, comforting rumble like the friendly growling of a very large, toothless predator. "I trust you rested well."

Watson glanced up to give Mycroft a pointed look, then directed his attention back down to catch Sherlock's reaction: a vacant smile, but wary somehow. Watson had never noticed such a reaction to Mycroft before. Had Sherlock always been so careful of him? "Mycroft. Very well, thank you. I do apologize for the inconvenience, of course."

A lie – he was lying; Watson was certain of it. And that disturbed him more than it normally would, to know that Holmes was being deceitful, for when Holmes truly wanted to lie, when he made an effort towards it, he did not display tells. More distressing even than that was that Mycroft did not seem to have observed this. Did Sherlock lie to him so often, then, that Mycroft assumed this mannerism to be a normal one, born of honesty?

"Mycroft, I wonder," Watson said, his tone utterly devoid of emotion. "Could you put up the light a bit? I'd like to get a better look at your brother." As soon as Mycroft had stepped away to turn up the wick on the wall lamp, Watson leaned in closer to Holmes and hissed, "What in bloody hell are you playing at? What's happened? You're not fine."

The façade slipped a bit, but not much – merely enough for Watson glimpse something vague and wild in Holmes' expression in the instant that the room brightened. As Holmes' features once again smoothed to inscrutability, Watson thumbed at the mark he had noticed earlier on Holmes' cheek. It was not a smudge of dirt but a bruise, not of the type caused by a sharp impact, such as Holmes might have sustained when falling to the floor insensate; it was the kind of bruise formed by an application of excessive pressure, such as by the grip of a hand.

Or a press of fingers.

Watson narrowed his eyes and frowned before taking a good look around them, one hand wrapped about Holmes' wrist to best gauge his pulse rate. A fresh glass of water, sipped from to judge by the smudges on the glass, sat innocuously on the dry sink next a pitcher that still held nearly two liters of water. Holmes' hand shook beneath Watson's fingers. He would not have been able to pour that glass without spilling something; his coordination upon Watson's entrance had been such that he could not even manage to pluck a cigarette from Watson's fingers. The sink and carpet were both dry, so there had been no spill. Of course, someone could have poured the glass and left it ready for him, but an instinct of indeterminate origin spoke against that. The pulse beneath his fingers jumped.

Mycroft's gaze had by now followed Watson's, and he squinted at the scene in irritation. "I gave instructions that no one was to enter this room without my being present."

Watson looked again to Holmes and found naked eyes staring back at him.

No. That word and nothing else encompassed the entirety of Watson's mind for a brief moment, and then he looked up at Mycroft. "Someone has been here."

"Well, yes," Mycroft replied as if correcting an exasperating child. "That much is obvious." He gestured around at the evidence, of which he had doubtless noted far more than Watson had. "I shall have to speak to the staff about the proper following of instruction."

"No, Mycroft," Watson snapped, causing Mycroft to furrow his brow at both the rudeness of his tone and the ungranted use of his first name. "_Someone has been here_."

Sherlock twisted and leaned over the arm on his chair so that he could see the room behind him, his somewhat speculative gaze meeting his brother's. After a moment of shared examinations, Mycroft looked to the second door, the one not leading to the corridor. Then he turned back and pierced Sherlock with a very indelicate gaze. "Surely not. This is an exclusive club. Every admittant must present credentials at the door, and furthermore, the staff is trained to recognize members on sight. No intruder could possibly have made it up here without notice."

Watson scoffed in Sherlock's place, since Sherlock himself had merely lowered his eyes at his brother's harsh words. "In the first place, _no _building is entirely secure; your brother can tell you that himself. And secondly, membership in an exclusive club, even _your_ exclusive club, does not put a man above reproach."

"Of course it doesn't," Mycroft returned; he had, by now, assumed an offended air. "Several of our members are involved in disreputable dealings, but they are paltry things – petty blackmail and intrigues, indiscrete dalliances with unsuitable partners… Do you truly think that I would fail to notice a man of genuinely criminal character? Of a twisted enough turn of mind to have orchestrated…" He trailed off abruptly, as if it had just occurred to him that his brother was in the room, and that he could hardly continue speaking as if the wronged party were a stranger, or perhaps some passing acquaintance of no consequence. Mycroft seemed to grow smaller though he moved nary a muscle in the silence. "Forgive me, _mon frère_. That was unnecessary."

Sherlock merely looked puzzled, and Mycroft shook his head in a bizarre combination of sorrow and irritation.

"Holmes." Watson reclaimed Sherlock's attention with a touch to his shoulder. "Was someone here?"

"I thought that we had already established that. Do keep up, Watson."

"Don't deflect; I will not play word games with you over this. Was someone – _anyone_ – here when you woke up? Did something happen before we arrived?"

Sherlock stared at him, studying his face as if he expected to find something other than Watson's concern. He seemed to waver for a moment, his resolve flickering visibly on his face.

Watson gripped his other shoulder as well and gave him a gentle shake as if to break the eggshell-thin surface of his composure. "Holmes. Did something happen?"

"No."

That answer was unexpected, and Watson did not, for a single moment, believe it to be the truth. "Are you certain?"

Sherlock tilted his head to one side, an uneasiness in his manner that spoke of something guarded and perhaps just a shade distrustful. Eventually, Holmes shuttered his expression altogether and replied, "Absolutely. Nothing happened. Can we go home now?"

"Holmes, I am only trying to help you."

The expression which came over Holmes' face at that could have frozen the surface of a fresh cup of tea. "Oh. Is that what you call it?"

Mycroft made a startled sound, then admonished, "Sherlock!"

Ignoring his brother's outburst, Sherlock continued, "Was it not you who impressed upon me the importance of not deceiving one's friends?"

Watson's head jerked a bit from side to side, an indication of regret rather than denial. His gaze flickered in Mycroft's direction, but did not actually leave Sherlock's person. This was more important that any concern for privacy from the elder Holmes. "I owe you an apology for this morning, for the argument we had over the paper. But Holmes – "

"It was during that affair with Mr. Culverton Smith. Do you recall, Watson? You were absolutely beside yourself upon learning that I had lied to you. You spent an entire hour lecturing me on the importance of honesty, and then you asked me why I had not told you the truth of the matter from the beginning. Do you recall my response?"

Uncertain of where this was going, but sure that it would be unpleasant, to judge by the sharp glint of banked fury that Holmes could not quite conceal in his eyes, Watson replied, "Of course. You did not trust me to maintain the deception well enough to successfully lure Smith to Baker Street. You said that dissimulation was not part of my character."

With no warning, Holmes unclasped his hands from where he had been grasping them together around one knee, and dropped his feet to the floor so that he could lean forward. "My concern was apparently unwarranted, my dear Doctor." His voice was venomous, and so unlike his manner of late that Watson drew back from him. "Your acting skills are far better than I ever credited."

Watson swallowed, his lips briefly forming soundless words as he tried to produce a persuasive response. "Holmes, that situation was entirely dissimilar. You made me believe that you were dying, for god's sake!"

"Yes," Holmes drawled, settling back to sprawl languidly in the chair. "And you made me believe that I was safe." He gave Watson one last look of the purest loathing and then stared past him at the drawn curtains. He whispered an addendum to that statement, however, which Watson was not certain he was meant to hear, and with the words, the hatred in his expression turned to a sadness profound in its simplicity. "You promised." He did not seem to refer to any one promise in particular, and the assertion seemed more powerful for being so vague. Holmes put _every _promise on the table with that statement.

"Holmes…" Watson shifted and placed a hand on the arm of the chair next to Holmes' elbow. He had done far more damage by his well-intentioned lie than he had ever imagined he might. And he had no excuse to offer. To claim that he was trying to protect Holmes by not worrying him sounded trite in his own mind. "I could not think how to tell you."

Holmes offered a rude snort and shifted his gaze further to the left – further from Watson's pleading face.

"Lestrade is wrong, Holmes. And I have not given up on Fourth Man. If he is out there – "

Abruptly, Holmes slammed his fist into the arm rest, startling Watson into nearly overbalancing as he jerked backwards. "_If_, Watson! Do you hear yourself? _If!_ Not even _you_ believe me!" They stared at each other, Holmes breathing hard enough for it to be unhealthy, and Watson breathing not at all. Holmes narrowed his eyes. "You do not even deny it." He gave a mean, self deprecating laugh and sprawled once again in his chair, his ease a depressing thing and his eyes absently flickering over the expanse of curtain and wall beyond Watson's shoulder. He took a careful drag of the rapidly diminishing cigarette. "Thank you, Watson. I will no longer require your assistance in this matter."

While Watson fretted with his cuffs and Holmes seethed in silence, Mycroft quietly excused himself from the room. He left through the side door rather than the one leading into the main hall, and Watson watched his bulk disappear into the darkness of the adjoining room. Then he made himself confront Holmes again and say, "I have made a grievous error, my friend, and I have hurt you by it. I know that you will deny such sentimentality – "

"I deny nothing." The anger seemed to drain from Holmes' body, leaving only a delicate weariness behind. He inhaled as if to heave a great sigh, and then merely breathed it out again in calmness. Holmes' eyes worked their way steadily back in Watson's direction, but stopped short of actually landing on him. "Watson, I do not know what to think anymore. If you tell me that he does not exist, I will take your word on it. Only, please…" He broke off and bowed his head to frown intently at his hands, the nub of the cigarette still trailing a wisped curl of smoke. Even now, they continued to shake. "Please do not lie to me again. I understand now why it so upset you with Culverton Smith. You insisted on my solemn word that day that I would not purposefully deceive you in such a manner again, and I gave it. I never thought that the vow was not binding on you as well. That was _my_ error; it was never explicitly stated. If you match your promise to mine now, I will forget that this ever passed between us."

Watson nodded without hesitation and leaned up on his haunches again to grasp Holmes by the forearm. The part of Watson that still ached to think of Reichenbach wanted to accuse him of breaking his promise less than a year after giving that vow. But he knew that he could never bring that dark time up on his own initiative. They had agreed to put the matter behind them, after all - to render it a non-event in their acquaintanceship. "I will make that promise on one condition."

Holmes seemed to swim up from whatever melancholia had beckoned at the start of Watson's apology. He blinked a few times and then fixed an expectant gaze on Watson. Not on his eyes, however; he continued to avoid that, staring instead in the general direction of the topmost button on Watson's shirt.

For no real purpose, Watson nodded again, perhaps to encourage Holmes' marginal attempt to deal with the way this _felt_ for him. Or perhaps the gesture was only for himself. On a whim, Watson slid his hand down Holmes' arm and grasped his fingers instead to still the steady tremor that still gripped him. "Tell me what happened before we got here."

A boneless lassitude stole over Holmes' features, disturbing for its incongruity to this conversation. Holmes leaned more fully back in his chair, looking for all the world as if he might fall asleep at any moment. "I was thirsty." He sucked his lips in against his teeth and then offered Watson a watery smile as he finally looked him in the eye. "Fourth Man poured the water, and since I was not up to holding the glass myself, he assisted me." The fingers in Watson's grasp curled and then tightened over Watson's to a point just short of painful. "I know he was merely a figment, my dear chap." His smile lingered on his lips, though it had already faded from the skin about his eyes. "But it was very real, all the same." His gaze slid away from Watson's as if Holmes simply had no energy left to prevent it from wandering.

Throughout the sparse explanation, Watson had been concentrating on controlling the emotional reaction that threatened to impose itself upon the despair in Holmes' manner. Now, he felt compelled to ask, "What makes you so certain that it was not a real event?" Even as he conceded the necessity of asking, Watson could not help thinking of it as a cruel thing to ask a man already balanced so precariously.

Holmes was, by now, gazing vacantly at the ceiling, his head tipped back against the wing of the chair. His fingers lay lax once again in Watson's hand. The cigarette pinched between two fingers of his other hand had gone out. "He said so."

Watson swiveled his entire torso to face Holmes more fully. Perhaps more sharply than was warranted, Watson demanded, "What did he say, exactly?"

Unexpectedly, Holmes chuckled at that. It was a suspiciously wet sound. "My dear, sweet Watson. Believe me when I say that you really do not want to know what he said."

Watson frowned but let the matter lie; he did not want to push Holmes from his current, fragile state of calm.

Several minutes later, Mycroft returned looking perturbed but stated that he had found nothing too extraordinary in the adjoining row of rooms. There were signs of recent occupancy, but that was hardly startling. The staff had also noticed several of the club's members moving about in the hallway and exiting various rooms on this floor. Someone had clearly entered Sherlock's room, but that was the only thing that any of them could determine with certainty. And Sherlock, after stating once again his desire to go home, remained resolutely silent for the remainder of their stay.

* * *

Holmes waited near the curb with his hands pressed deep into his pockets. His gloves were not on his person; he could not recall whether or not he had picked them up from the table beside the door when he had left Baker Street. Possibly, he had set them down in Lestrade's office, but if that were the case, he would simply consider them a loss. He had no desire to either see or speak to Lestrade at any point in the near future. Part of him was embarrassed by the dim recollections he possessed of the scene caused by his contemptible reaction. More than half of him was simply too angry and offended to bother dealing with any of it at all.

Tiny specks of snowflakes fell thick across Carlton House Terrace, which Holmes watched from his perch at the corner of Regent Street. In the other direction, he could only barely make out the edges of Saint James Square. The building housing the Diogenes Club loomed like a specter at his back, an oppressive presence within the thickening snowfall. He did not huddle in his great coat, though he thought about it as the wind blew more chill than a moment ago. Several hansoms clattered past, wheels marking deep ruts in snow dirtied by pedestrians and horses. Holmes shivered at the cold and considered the merits of interrupting the discussion going on at his back for the sake of requesting a cigarette. He decided a moment later that he did not want one quite enough for that.

Holmes loitered well, from long practice at being inconspicuous, while pretending not to notice that Watson and Mycroft were talking about him. Holmes could tell that Watson was more worried than he had been in several weeks, but there was little that Holmes could think to do to put him at ease. And he did not really want him at ease, to be honest. Watson had lied to him. Holmes was not sure how that made him feel, but it was an unpleasant sensation at the very least. Let Watson share in the discomfort caused by his dissemblance. Holmes wanted him to hurt; it was something that he had not felt since Mary Morstan had entered their lives. While an unwelcome development, there was a grim satisfaction to be found in spite.

The muffled quality of a nascent snowfall lent a sense of suspension to the evening, as if all the world had been put on hold for the duration. Holmes seemed able to think clearly for the first time in months. He felt not like himself, but not _un_like himself either. This state of disconnection was not a good thing; he knew that much. And yet he reveled in it for the simple mundanity of having so little on his mind that the usual clutter of his thought processes seemed a surreal and distant thing. He could be objective from this distance without the aid of chemical solutions. He could look back on the incident in Mycroft's private room and know that the majority of it was most likely a trick of the senses caused by lingering morphine dreams and the consumption of chloral compounded by the nervous fit to which he had succumbed in Lestrade's office. It made perfect sense, after all; his mind had been stretched thin by the incident the previous night. Of course he had not yet fully recovered from it.

Holmes also looked back and _knew_, beyond any shadow of doubt, that Fourth Man _had_ been there, however muddled and nonsensical his recollection. But he could hardly explain that to Watson without confirming himself just as mad as everyone seemed to fear he might be. As he himself feared he might be. Art in the blood, he had once told Watson. And so many of an artistic bend were mad in at least a small measure. The dwindling rational part of Holmes' mind could credit the possibility that he was no longer quite sane. He did not like it, and his intellect railed against the fear of it just as vehemently as did his less reasonable aspects. But he did consider it. If this were a case, and he the client, he would be bound by logic to consider it.

A collection of greetings and a scattering of laughter drew Holmes' eyes eastward toward the intersection of Cockspur Street. Though not the source of the noise, Holmes recognized the figure of Cartright shadowing against the side of a building, just outside the halo cast by the nearest gaslight. Holmes nodded to let him know he'd been seen, and Cartright detached himself from the murk with a smile in return. His footsteps crunched in the fresh snow as he came up to stand alongside Holmes, joining rather than approaching him. There was a subtle difference. "Mister 'olmes, sir."

"Surely you have a warmer place to be than this," Holmes returned. He detected the quiet amiability of his own voice even as Cartright did, but where Holmes had no energy left to address the oddness of it, Cartright looked at him sidelong. Hoping both to deflect the scrutiny and to sooth his fraying nerves, Holmes asked, "I don't suppose you have an extra cigarette that you would be willing to part with?"

Cartright kept right on staring from the corner of his eye as he replied, "Mister 'olmes, you'd be welcome to my last one if I were dyin' for the want of it."

Holmes twitched and hunched in on himself, his hands clenching in his pockets. "I am certain that is not necessary." He cast his glance in the opposite direction and forced a modicum of ease back into his stance.

"With all respect, sir, I don't think you quite appreciate all what you done for me. A man's got a right to be grateful."

A cigarette appeared in Holmes' periphery and he jerked himself back to awareness of the present, turning back toward Cartright in the process. He took the proffered fag with a mumbled, "One should not take such things to excess."

"You ain't got no say in how I express my regards." Cartright struck a match and cupped his hands around the paltry flame long enough for Holmes to light the cigarette by it.

After puffing a soft red glow into the end of the cigarette and then inhaling deeply enough to feel the burn in his lungs, Holmes replied, "Impertinent pup." He took another long drag and then indicated Cartright's feet with the hand holding the cigarette. "You need a new pair of shoes."

Something soft and altogether uncalled for drifted across Cartright's countenance. "You always used to twit me 'bout that."

Holmes scoffed, a disgruntled sound more than anything else. "And how were you to run errands for me if I allowed your toes to fall off from the cold?"

"There was lots of us about, Mister 'olmes. You could've 'ad your pick of the ones left."

"Bah." Holmes scowled into the distance and sucked at the cigarette. A few seconds later, he took to covertly watching Watson gesticulate at Mycroft while hissing below the threshold necessary for the sound to carry to the street. Reading lips was second nature to Holmes, however; Watson would have done as well not to bother.

Cartright followed the line of his sight and then asked, "They talkin' about you?"

"They are concerned for my wellbeing."

Watson's mouth formed around an angry if hushed exclamation of, _Someone was in that room – we both saw the evidence!_

Cartright's voice came quiet like a sudden wind. "You know we'd do anything to 'elp you. You _know _that."

Mycroft appeared impatient, but he replied in as placid a manner as he ever did. _Evidence that someone walked in, possibly poured a glass of water, and left before we arrived. I am not pleased by the intrusion, but there is hardly evidence of foul play._

_There were marks – _

_He struggled against the men at the Yard. You know how Sherlock gets when he is in a mood._

"Yes, I know," Holmes whispered, almost hoping that the reply would be lost to the small distance between them. "You've been keeping a guard on my home."

Cartright shifted his feet in discomfort; surely he could not have thought that Holmes had failed to notice how many of them had been hanging around, and at what hours.

_That was not a 'mood,' _Watson retorted, becoming more irate by the second. _His nerves have been fragile – _

Holmes winced and averted his gaze so that he did not have to see how pathetically Watson described his recent difficulties.

"We 'eard what them bobs' been sayin', that you weren't seein' right when it 'appened."

Holmes' curiosity got the better of him and he looked back up in time to see Mycroft shake his head and say, _You can hardly expect me to hand the club rolls to a non-member. _"It is not your concern," he told Cartright. "I would ask you to stay clear of this."

"Do you really think we'll just tuck tail an' hide?"

Watson only barely maintained his composure when he replied, _I don't care what Sherlock said – something happened, and he won't tell me what it was!_

_He was barely lucid at the time, _Mycroft pointed out; it had the air of repetition. _Surely, if anyone could tell the difference between a dream and reality, it is my brother._

_You don't know what he's been like. _

"What do you need to prove there was another one?" Cartright asked, his tone a match to the calm, stubborn intensity suffusing Holmes' own. "We'll find it for you iffin we 'ave to toss the whole east end to do it."

_I spoke to the staff_, Mycroft interjected before Watson could get good and steaming on a rant. _None of them saw a man who did not belong. The private rooms on that floor were used only by their assigned members, the reading rooms were not frequented by anyone unusual – _

"I will not ask you to stay out of this again, young man."

"You don' have to tell me nuthin'," Cartright rejoined, "but I ain't gonna stop what I'm doin' just because you said. Nor the rest of the boys, neither."

_Someone tried to suffocate him!_ Watson snarled. _I don't care if he says he imagined it, I don't care if he thinks himself mad as a hatter – the evidence is there, Mycroft, in the mark on his face, in the swelling of the soft tissue – _

Holmes tore his eyes away again and looked, truly looked, at Cartright. The boy had long since grown into a man. How had he failed to notice before? "You do not owe me anything, lad."

Cartright nodded, and it seemed a sad thing. "I know," he whispered. "You won't never take nothin' back for it, and we respect that. But what's like to happen to all those other little ones what always come along, if you're not still 'ere to look out for them?"

"And what makes you think I don't trust you to that very thing in my stead?"

Cartright's eyes dropped, and he shifted as if just realizing the exposure inherent in conducting a conversation like this. He had removed his wooly cap at some point and was now working the frayed edge through restless fingers. "You ain't never left us out in the cold, Mister 'olmes. We ain't like to do it to you neither. You and the Doctor, you're the closest to family what most of us ever had."

"Now see here," Holmes broke in, alarmed at the turn that this visit was taking. "There's no call for all of this sentiment. Just leave it lie, there's a good fellow."

"No," Cartright snapped. "We ain't simple, Mister 'olmes. You didn' 'ave no reason for doing good by us – you didn' get nothin' from us, no matter what errands you sent us on."

"I assure you, I had no motives beyond the procurement of cheap labor."

"Oh, bollocks. You want me to believe that you taught us letters and gave us scarfs and sneaked us food and taught us trade so's we'd work cheap for you? If that was all you was after, you could of done better gettin' a boy or two from the work house. What you did, had nothin' to do with gettin' errand boys."

"Don't!"

Cartright startled and looked up, and Holmes could tell that the boy was reading him with transparent ease: the anxiety twisted in the tense line of Holmes' shoulders, the pale hint of something less easily defined settling into the tightened lines about his eyes… Cartright swallowed and looked down again. A moment later, he straightened with resolve to say his piece, but he simultaneously looked as if he would rather shrink into the ground and be away. "When I was growin' up, I used to imagine that one day, I'd have me a family, and my boy would look to me just like I look to you – like he hopes he can grow up and be half that man as what he's lookin' at. And that's somethin' I think you ought to know, cuz there's no one else what could've been that for me."

Holmes kept his eyes fixed firmly on the snow falling all around him – a light flurry now transformed into a fat, fluffy swirl of cold, stifling white. He knew that Cartright's words had impacted him, that they had registered on an emotional level and were doing something strange behind his ribcage. Watson normally saved him from these embarrassing moments of utter uselessness, but Watson was approximately three minutes from outright shouting at Mycroft, and Holmes had abruptly lost the ability to lip read. A reaction to this sort of pronouncement was expected – to remain silent would be an insult. "That's… You're welcome. Now off with you."

A tiny laugh shook Cartright's shoulders and he shook his head with a fondness normally only ever found on Watson's face. "You're 'opeless."

Holmes couldn't help it – he grinned. The shared moment passed, and Holmes looked down to study the remainder of his still-burning cigarette. His mind pricked at the inside of his skull, restless and uneasy and still scattered by the effects of chloral and stress. "I am no father figure." It seemed important to point that out.

"Yeah," Cartright replied gently. "You are."

Disturbed now, Holmes fidgeted with the spent nub of the cigarette and glowered into the shower of white obscuring his view of the street in all directions. It occurred to him suddenly, how easy it would be for someone to approach him unseen. Or to slip away from the Diogenes Club unobserved. "Enough!" He flicked the stub into the street and shoved his hands back into this pockets. Watson called this his sulking pose, but he was not sulking, he was angry and put-upon, and why could no one simply _leave him alone_ anymore? "I have said that I do not want you involved in this. You will respect my wishes in this matter, and that is final. I will speak no more on this subject. Now leave. You have a fire somewhere to sit by – you came from it just now, I can smell it on you. Go back to it and stop plaguing me with your nonsense." He angled to put his back partially toward Cartright, his gaze directed toward the square even though it was now completely lost behind a curtain of snow.

No noise whatsoever reached Holmes' ears for a long moment, and then Cartright shifted with a soft crunch and squish of snow beneath worn soles. There would be holes in them, Holmes knew; he could hear the wet squelch as Cartright stepped. A hand squeezed Holmes' shoulder so gently that he may have imagined it, and then Cartright began to retreat, silent and without judgment, his wordless support left behind in Holmes' possession like a crutch for him to lean on.

Holmes turned to watch him go, and then abruptly called, "Wait."

Cartright stopped, not wary as Holmes would have expected, but hopeful.

Holmes glanced at Watson to find him calm once again, speaking casually with Mycroft, declining a dinner invitation. He left them to it and addressed himself to the grown-up little Irregular before him. "There may be…one thing."

"Just tell me what you need us to do," Cartright said, the boyish desire to please his benefactor still apparent in his face, for all he was not a child anymore.

A sigh worked its way up Holmes' throat and he expelled it in a sort of defeat. "I will never be free of this ludicrous, overly chivalric notion of yours, will I." He did not wait for an answer, though he caught a glimpse of the smile before Cartright concealed it behind a bitten lip. "Find my cigarette case." It was as much a concession as he ever made to anyone. "He took it with him that night, but it would be too conspicuous a thing for him to keep. I doubt he will have pawned it, and in any case, Lestrade would have found it by now if he had. But he would have disposed of it somehow, and rather quickly, I would think."

Cartright nodded, eager as the boy he used to be. "You got it, Mister 'olmes!"

"Cartright."

The young man stopped and turned back, waiting for additional instruction.

Holmes held out two five pound notes, and at Cartright's indignant look, he snapped, "Well, how are you to go haring off across London with holes in your bloody shoes? You'll be of no use to me if you freeze your toes off. Go see a cobbler, you daft thing." He shoved the fivers into Cartright's hand with an exasperated huff, and then gripped the boy's fingers in his own, crushing the papers into Cartright's palm. "Don't do anything stupid. Do you understand me? _Don't_—" Holmes gave the trapped fingers a hard shake. "—be stupid."

Cartright gave a solemn nod and used his free hand to cover Holmes' fingers where they no doubt pained his own for the fierceness of Holmes' grip. "We wouldn't do that to you, Mister 'olmes. We won't take no risks."

"Good." Holmes released him and shooed him off, impatient and uncomfortable with whatever had just passed between them. He watched as the lad walked away with a bounce in his step to disappear into the whiteness. A tiny bloom burned in Holmes' chest. He identified part of the sensation as pride in the character of the boy now grown, but he could not understand why it ached so much to feel it.

* * *

Holmes sat quietly in the hansom beside Watson, watching familiar streets and shops glide past his motionless eyes. Before leaving Pall Mall, Holmes had finally detected a foreshadowing in Mycroft's features of the worry that seemed to be plaguing Watson. Perhaps some argument of the good doctor's had been persuasive after all. He did not expect anything to come of it, though. How many times had he seen that look upon his brother's face as a child and hoped in vain that Mycroft would see what Sherlock could neither say nor ask for? Mycroft ever did avoid conflict, after all; he would not even stray from his daily routine for anything less than Queen and country, and even then, only far enough to pass the problem onto Sherlock. How could the poor younger brother's sordid dramahope to compare to that?

Holmes pressed his temple against the small, extraneous window fitted into the side of the open compartment and twisted his fingers together beneath the saddle blanket that the driver had kindly passed down to them to help keep out the chill. Wind and ice pellets stung his face and he squinted a bit to shield his eyes. Watson was speaking to him, but Holmes had ceased to listen less than a block after turning onto Oxford. He wasn't saying anything of import, after all. Or, well…it could have been important for all Holmes knew, he just didn't care if it was. Ennui settled about him like a pall. He knew that this was no better a thing than the false sense of disconnection he had enjoyed outside Mycroft's club. No matter; he could do nothing constructive in a state of excitement, so perhaps this lassitude would prove useful. It was almost like cocaine, save for the enervating quality of it.

"Say something," Watson pleaded, his voice cast low to avoid being overheard by the driver. He had leaned closer to Holmes, perhaps in an attempt to read his expression. Their legs pressed together beneath the blanket from knee to hip. It seemed…obscene, all of a sudden, despite Watson's belief in the innocence of their intimacy.

Holmes pulled away and tucked himself in the corner of the compartment, his facing partially toward Watson an incidental side effect of the process.

"Anything, Holmes," Watson pressed. He respected Holmes' withdrawal and forbore to touch him, but the intensity of his regard accomplished the same thing as a sharp shaking would have. "Tell me to sod off, if you like, just… Holmes, I'm sorry. I don't know how else to say it. I'm _sorry_. I never should have kept it from you, but I was frightened as well, and – "

"We have already discussed this, Watson, and you know how I detest repetition." Holmes shifted his shoulders to fit more comfortably into the corner of the compartment, and faced back into the wind. "I understand why you would do such a thing. It was an emotional reaction, and you are an emotional being. I account for it in my summation of you. My own reaction in the foyer was extreme, and as such, should be considered an aberration; it will not happen again. There is no further need to speak of this."

Watson did not move at first in reaction to Holmes' dismissal of the subject. Then he merely slumped on the bench on his own side of the hansom and stared in the opposite direction from Holmes. His silence did not last, of course; it was not in his nature to leave a thing like that. "Your emotions are not an aberration, Holmes; you had every right to react as you did. Anyone else would have done very nearly the same thing."

The cab drew up to the curb at 221B and Holmes drew in a deep breath as he straightened in his seat. He let it back out carefully enough that Watson would not mistake it for a sigh. "I am not 'everyone else.'" He left Watson to pay the driver and mounted the stoop without looking to either side, his attention fixed on his goal – warmth and shelter, his pipe waiting for him upstairs to banish the recollection that he had to nick cigarettes from other people when he wanted to smoke outside of his home. His violin. A fresh pot of tea for the asking, blessed quiet, and his own habitual clutter.

The key ring slid on its chain from his pocket and he unlocked the door just as Watson came up behind him. "Holmes – "

"I believe I shall retire, Watson. Feel free to use the sitting room as late as you like; you shant disturb me."

Watson secured the door in their wake and waved Mrs Hudson off as Holmes climbed the stairs without so much as a glance for her presence in the hall. Holmes heard him request a pot of tea, and then with an apology for the lateness of their arrival, a plate of sandwiches in place of a proper dinner. Mrs Hudson would be sure to fuss at that. Holmes expected that she had been keeping two plates warm for them, and that she would present them to Watson shortly with a stern look for his intimation that she would ever subject him to a cold sandwich if she could help it. No woman would; John Watson could charm a hot meal from the Queen herself, or so Holmes believed. It was incidental that Holmes received that treatment as well, being in Watson's proximity as he almost always was.

Holmes wandered through the sitting room, approaching a cheerful fire that Mrs Hudson had obviously kept burning for them. It took the bite from the air and melted the frost from the windows. Beyond the glass, Holmes could see the snow falling to coat Baker Street in the purest white, and nothing else. The morrow would be for lazy reading by the fire, then, and keeping indoors at all costs. He thought about glancing across the room to gauge Watson's mood and the likelihood of his attempting to make rounds in the morning, then decided against it. He wanted a pipe more than he wanted to deduce Watson's plans for the next day, and speaking the actual words in inquiry would only invite unwanted conversation.

The old black clay pipe suited him best at the moment, and Holmes took it down from the rack. His tobacco slipper seemed to be missing from the nail in the mantelpiece – Mrs Hudson again, no doubt – but he had a fresh pouch in the drawer of his dressing table, and a fire was burning in his bedroom as well. That would do. Watson could relax and have his meal in peace, and Holmes would not have to bother with his furtive concern for the remainder of the evening. Holmes took his pipe and a notebook from the chemistry table, ignored the look Watson gave him for his silence, and retreated toward his bedroom.

"Wait. Holmes, Mrs Hudson is bringing a plate for you as well."

"You may have my portion if you like," Holmes replied without pausing.

"I don't want your portion – I want _you_ to eat your portion. Holmes, you've had nothing since breakfast, and even then, it was barely enough to sustain a grown man."

Holmes sidetracked to lift a box of matches from the table beside Watson's chair. "I am no longer hungry, Watson. I wish to turn in."

Watson set something down on the sideboard – from its apparent weight and the solid thunk of its landing, Holmes could not tell for certain if it was a book or some other object. "If you eat something first, we can both then retire. That way, I won't disturb you by coming in after you've nodded off."

Holmes slowed as he neared his bedroom door and then stopped, one hand braced on the jamb, his back rounding just the slightest bit as if concealing anticipation of a blow. "You will not disturb me if you utilize your own room for the night."

The ticking of a clock in the hallway outside their sitting room sounded clear in the silence that greeted that statement. Then, "Are you...are you saying I am no longer welcome…"

"I am saying that I wish to retire alone tonight. You may take that as you will."

"You _are_ still angry, then. Is this punishment? You mean to make me pass a sleepless night upstairs where I won't hear if something goes wrong in the night – "

"I mean to make you understand that this arrangement can go no further!" Holmes slammed the notebook down onto the table behind the settee and whirled to find that Watson had begun to draw closer and then stopped at Holmes' outburst. "It was forgivable before, but it cannot continue. I will not allow you to enable the feebleness of my nerves as a distraction from the manner in which I enable the feebleness of yours. I won't be coddled, Watson. And you must learn to stop living in fear of my disappearance."

"That is not why – "

"Yes, it is," Holmes interrupted, his voice deadly calm. Sticky, perhaps, like syrup. "What else would it be, John? My most intimate friend?"

Watson's lips parted, his face darkening with a sudden fury. "Do not _dare_ mock our friendship, Holmes. I am warning you. My regard for you is _not _perverse, nor yours for mine, and I am growing sick of repeating myself on the matter!"

"If there is nothing perverse in it," Holmes returned sharply, "then this will be no hardship for either of us."

"Are you – are you _experimenting_ with our sleeping arrangements so that you can – what, deduce whether or not my concern for your wellbeing crosses some line that you have arbitrarily drawn to denote _brotherly acquaintance _from _unknowing indorser_? Are you truly that cold, Holmes?"

Holmes blinked at him. "I am retiring now, Watson. Alone. Have a pleasant evening."

"I will not tolerate your ridiculous theories, Holmes, and we are not finished – come back here!"

And it must have been there all along, the anger, simmering away in a slow rolling boil beneath the surface of Holmes' skin because when he reacted to Watson's sharp demand – as if he had the right to demand _anything_ of him now – it was just there, all at once, and he unleashed it before he knew what he was doing. It came as a bit of a shock when he swung his fist and it impacted Watson's cheekbone; Holmes had not realized that he had been coming after him, probably to stop Holmes from locking him out before he could satisfy himself as to…whatever he needed to satisfy himself about. Still, when Watson staggered to the side in shock to catch himself upon the back of his basket chair near the happily crackling fire, Holmes did not hesitate to swing again, though to an outside observer, it may have appeared that he had.

Watson only barely managed to duck out of the way that time, and he caught at Holmes' arm as Holmes overbalanced. He should have expected Watson to anticipate a second hit, and he should have compensated for it. Even as this thought cycled through Holmes' thoughts, however, Holmes himself was mindlessly attempting a third hit. It was gritty, this foreign sensation bubbling up into his consciousness. This was outside of his experience of himself, and he had no defense against what it made him do. He wanted nothing better than to tear at Watson, and he had _never_ wanted that, not even at his worst.

Watson still had one of his arms trapped, and Holmes wrenched at it to free himself. There was no finesse to his movements, no thought, no planning. He could get too little leverage for a proper strike so Holmes tried to jab at him with the heel of his hand instead, but Watson was already shoving him away, hard, and Holmes flailed as he crashed over the basket chair and then toppled into an ungainly heap on the floor, taking Watson's side table and all of its contents with him. He remained lying there for a moment, panting with exertion amongst the detritus even though he had expended little enough energy in the brief tussle. Watson's reading lamp lay in shattered pieces near his left hand, shards of glass winking with the leap and jump of reflected flames, a pool of oil spreading dangerously near to the hearthstones where a stray spark could set the whole thing alight.

"Damn it!" Watson rushed from Holmes' field of vision, then returned with a handful of rags and cotton batting from Holmes' chemistry table. He arrested the inexorable, creeping progress of the lamp oil, sopping the rags and the cotton to get the remains of it away from the open flame.

Holmes wrinkled his nose at the smell, got his breathing under control, and then rolled away from the litter of their fight. He meant to keep going, to roll straight up onto his feet and stalk away, but his knees failed to balance beneath him and he ended up back on them next to the overturned chair, gripping a leg of it to stay kneeling upright. The uncontrolled urgency of his intemperate reaction had passed, but the need to rend something apart remained. His eyes fell on a book that had been misplaced in the destruction – one of Watson's yellowbacks with a slip of paper marking the last page he had read. Holmes flashed back to _that_ night, to stumbling into the sitting room and bringing reek with him, the memory so thick he nearly gagged on it. Watson had been reading that book when Holmes had left for the boxing ring, and Holmes had caught it as Watson had startled awake. He had picked that slip of paper from the mantle and marked Watson's place before setting it aside on the table to be picked up and finished later. Watson had never finished it. The page marker remained where Holmes had left it that night.

Before he knew it, that book was in Holmes' hands, trembling fingers tearing out pages and wrenching the binding apart. He flung the pieces aside, flutters of tattered paper and a thunk of the remainder of the binding striking the wall, but it wasn't nearly enough. That stupid, bloody book – that tripe literary trash – that was what Watson had stayed home for, and he hadn't even had the decency to finish the confounded thing? After what it had cost him? Watson should have been with _him_, not reading some bloody book in his chair at the fire, some pointless _fiction_ of absolutely no redeeming quality – sentimental, unrealistic _stories_ about _nothing_ in his stupid, soft, comfortable chair!

"Holmes, no!"

Arms went around him like metal bands, and Holmes lashed out and back, kicking, shouting obscenities the likes of which had never passed his lips before because foul language was fit only for the uneducated – for those who did not have the wits to craft a truly devastating insult, who did not understand the subtle art of language. Watson tried to restrain him, holding his arms back, but Holmes twisted and threw him off and swung whatever he was holding at him to _keep_ him off – ah, yes, the fireplace poker. Watson dropped out of the way and scrambled back, and all Holmes could think to do was stand there over the cracked frame of Watson's favorite reading chair, old wood split by the forceful impact of the metal rod in Holmes' hand, and –

"You were supposed to be there!"

– he might be mad now, he didn't know. There had been a man in the room at the club, but that didn't mean it was the man he thought he'd seen. He didn't even know anymore if there had been three of four of them – everyone else said three, _everyone_, and Holmes was brilliant, but he had been known to be wrong -

"You didn't even have to do anything, you bloody, selfish, son of a bitch! You just had to come and _stand there_ and it wouldn't have happened!"

– and he didn't know if what had happened after the three left was real or just in his mind, he didn't know if he had made it up like they said he had, created an invisible man as a temporary balm to his fracturing sanity. He couldn't tell. He couldn't remember Fourth Man's face, he couldn't recall the scent of him or the style of his clothes, or the color and embroidery of his handkerchief, he didn't know – he only knew that Watson had promised not to let him be mad, but there was no way – _no way_ – that anyone could have known about the invisible men unless they _were_ the invisible men. And Fourth Man had left tracks in the freshly swept nap of the carpet -

"But you _weren't there_! And you didn't see him - _nobody _saw him, but _he__ was there_!"

– and Mycroft had said that no one could possibly have breached the sanctity of the Diogenes Club without being seen. It was exactly what they all used to say to mummy to try in vain to calm her fits. _They could not truly have been there; if they had, they would have been seen by someone other than just you._

"Please. Holmes, please – just put it down, alright? There's a good chap." Watson had regained his feet but he kept his distance, his hands out and shown to be empty. Holmes had never seen him so nervous. Afraid of him. "Holmes…Sherlock…"

Holmes looked down at the poker clenched in his own whitened fingers. His whole arm shook with the tension. "You said you wouldn't allow it." God, he sounded…so unlike himself, he sounded emotional, he sounded common – they had all rendered him common. He looked for his habitual detachment, but it was gone.

"I won't," Watson assured him, earnest in that manner which Holmes had always found dull before, but which simply rekindled the fury in him now. "Whatever it is, Holmes, I swear – "

"_Don't_!" Sibilant hiss of a word, that. He had pointed the poker at Watson's nose, and he was both gratified and ashamed when Watson flinched from it. As if Holmes would ever strike at him in earnest. "I have been lied to enough for one day. I will not tolerate your false promises anymore. I will not be pandered to. If you believe me to be mad, then have the decency to _say so_!" He shouted the last two words, jabbing emphasis with the poker, and again, Watson cringed as if in expectation of violence. "If you believe that I am wrong, that I imagined him, then _STOP_ – " He rocked beneath the force of a shiver of unaccustomed rage and then felt it subside in time for him to finish, " – acting as if he is real!"

"That's not what I believe."

"Isn't it?" Holmes snarled. "No one else saw him, Watson. Even I am not infallible. Even I admit that in your place, with the witness statements as they are, with the evidence being what it is, I would doubt my recollection. If it were _you_ in this place rather than I, I would doubt you!"

"That doesn't make you delusional!" Watson insisted. "Listen to me. Holmes, I have seen mirages myself. I have been in that place, in Afghanistan, both under the influence of medication and not. For god's sake - I have had flashbacks in this very room when I was utterly convinced that I was under fire again at Maiwand. And I am not mad. To imagine something as real is not the same as being chronically deluded."

Holmes felt his lip curling into a sneer. "You say that to placate a man disturbed by his delusions, and then you claim to believe that I did not imagine an extra man."

"I am addressing one point at a time, you ridiculous nutter!" Watson winced at his choice of words and then elected to go on without apology for them. "And I err on the side of caution. Holmes, I am not like you – I do not have your mind and I never will. But even I can see that something about this business is not right. Leave everything else aside for a moment, will you? That night – that original night – they did give you the money back. Why would plain, common thugs do that? It was _fifty pounds_, Holmes. Only a man accustomed to having that kind of money would be able to part with it so easily, and for nothing more than the sake of…of humiliation. I saw what kind of life Kirkpatrick led, I visited his house – the man lived in squalor. He would never have left such a sum of money behind like that; it would be too tempting a thing for him. _Think_, Holmes. Perhaps you did recreate some portion of it in your mind, but do you really believe that there was nothing more to it than a few criminals indulging base tendencies?"

Holmes' nostrils flared and he finally ceased to brandish the fireplace poker as a weapon against Watson's person. It clattered to the hearthstones with painful clarity in the tense silence of the sitting room. For fear of what else he might say, of what other hurtful words or uncontrollable fits of violence he might unleash upon his very dearest…_only_ friend, Holmes forced himself to subside. "I am retiring now." The words shook and scattered across syllables falling out of their proper rhythm. "Good evening, Watson."

With the utmost care, Holmes closed the door to his bedchamber behind himself and leaned against it as he turned the latch to lock it. He did the same to the second door, choosing not to react to the sight of Mrs Hudson standing white-faced and wide-eyed upon the landing with a dinner tray containing bread and two plates shaking in her hands. Then he removed his collar and his braces, and hung his frock coat and his waistcoat in the wardrobe. He rolled up his shirtsleeves, toed off his shoes, wrapped his natty old grey dressing gown around his shoulders, and only thought twice before removing the false bottom from the top drawer of his dresser. He had bade Watson dispose of his morphine, and he had implied that he would refrain from use of his cocaine, but if Watson was permitted to make false promises within the walls of their own home, why should Holmes be made to act any better?

He filled a syringe full of a ten percent solution and took it, and his kit, to bed with him. It was three days before he emerged from the stupor.

-TBC


	11. Chapter 11

"Holmes?"

Sharp raps, echoes of knuckles on wood, reverberated through Holmes' body. It took him several long moments, cotton batting stuffed in his head to obscure his thoughts, but he did eventually match the voice to John Watson.

"Holmes, come now, old boy. It's been a day since you even moved in there. Can you hear me?"

Holmes blinked several times, tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, a positively foul taste left behind on his pallet, thick like a melted, rancid confection. The room spun gently, not a whirl to herald a fainting spell but a rotation just pronounced enough to cause his stomach to flip low in his gut, and bile to trace a burning path upward to gurgle ominously in the back of his throat. He tried to roll onto his side but the effort was beyond him. He could hear his pulse fluttering wildly in the blood rushing past his ears. One of his hands flopped from his chest to lie limp near his face, and he stared in fascination as his fingers curled slightly upward like the spindly legs of a dead insect. He could not feel them do so.

"Holmes! If you do not answer me, I am going to assume that you are in need of medical attention."

How long had Watson been out there? Holmes had no idea. He only wanted to sleep a bit more. But that was not quite right, was it? There was something…nagging him, like bees stinging his brain. He was meant to be doing something, or looking for something, or paying attention to…something. He could not think like this; his own mind was an intolerable mess.

"I am going to count to three, Holmes. If you have not said anything by then, I will break this door down, do you hear me?"

Had he done something wrong? Watson sounded terribly cross with him. Holmes tried to recall what he had been doing lately. Experiments or…cases? There was the jewel theft case; he had liked that one. The culprits had shown promise, but they had ceased their activity. Outwardly ceased it – Holmes had never really believed that their streak had run its course. He would need to revisit the facts of the matter.

"One."

Then there was Lestrade and his pile of unsolved – ah, yes! Holmes had gone to Scotland Yard and made a nuisance of himself. No...no, that was not correct. Lestrade had made the nuisance, had he not? Either way, they were not speaking to Lestrade anymore, and Holmes did not want to see him ever again; he was a cad. Had Holmes told him so? Yes, that must be it – Watson was angry with him for alienating yet another of their casual acquaintances.

"Two."

Or perhaps it was Mycroft. Mycroft had said something. Holmes recalled being at the club. Then Watson had come, and they had gone home, and…Holmes had punched Watson in the face and broken his things. Oh. No, that would not do. He must apologize at once or Watson might wash his hands of him. A fellow did not simply go about destroying his flatmate's belongings like that. Watson had done nothing to deserve that. Except lie to him. And lies were not on. The last time Holmes had lied to Watson, it had turned Watson's mouth into a straight line and his face had gone dark like blown out lamps. Holmes understood now; when he had learned of Watson's lie, he had felt the way flames do when covered with a candle snuffer. Alone in a muffled, dark place, suffocating in the byproducts of his own exhalations.

But had Watson really done something horrible by it? Watson had said that he did not wish Holmes to worry, to be frightened – to break down in the foyer at the thought that he was not safe outside of his own home. He had meant to protect Holmes from the truth. Of course, he had not thought that to do so would blind him to the lurking danger that remained. Holmes had done something like that once. He had paid a boy to deliver a false message to Watson in order to lure him away so that he would not have to watch Holmes die. Had he ever told Watson about that? Holmes hoped not; it would make Watson sad to know, and perhaps angry. Watson had a formidable temper; it made Holmes' nerves jangle at the roots of his teeth.

Of course, Holmes had not died at Reichenbach, but when he had penned that note in a script not his own, Holmes had not thought that he would survive. He had only wanted to rid the world of a mad mathematician – a mathematician who had threatened to harm Watson if Holmes did not cease to hinder his criminal activities. Holmes could not have done that; Moriarty had been too dangerous to allow clemency. But he had threatened Watson. There had been no price that Holmes was unwilling to pay to keep Watson safe, even should Watson end up hating him for it. A person of a more romantic turn might call that kind of fealty love. Watson was a romantic - incurably so. All of those sea novels had evidently rotted his brain. Had Watson been this tedious when they first met? Surely not. Perhaps Holmes had somehow damaged him through their long and nearly constant association.

"Three."

Holmes was not aware of it when Watson finally gained access to his bedroom, but he did notice the familiar patterns of Watson's brocade dressing gown swirling close to his eyes, the smell of day-old soap lingering on the air, and Watson's sleep scents. It must have been early in the morning, then, prior to Watson's seeing to his toilet.

"...Holmes?" A tiny voice, distant and weak. Frightened?

No, not quite. But close. Holmes was rubbish with emotions; Watson knew that. He always asked about those things, or stated them plainly if it were necessary. He was always making allowances for Holmes' shortcomings, his dear Watson. No one understood Holmes as he did. No one else bothered to try, and even if they did, Holmes would have nothing to do with them because there would only ever be one John Watson. Holmes did not want a substitution. His Watson was unique, unlike the rest of humanity which bumbled about and multiplied and covered everything like...like oysters choking the sea floor. Disgusting, spineless, useless creatures, those. Watson was not an oyster.

Watson towered over him and then gradually drew into focus as his face descended. Ah. Holmes was on the floor, then. He tried to tell Watson that he was one of those shiny silver fish that jumped from the water and seemed to fly for a bare instant before they disappeared back into the dark waters that bore them. It came out as a wordless gurgle followed by a painful cough.

"Oh, thank god!" Watson cupped Holmes' jaw and angled his head for a better look at his face. "What have you been doing in here?"

Holmes blinked a few times and tried to get a look at his immediate surroundings. He already knew that he was on the floor, but the space between his bed and the hearth looked like the sort of nest that one of his more feral Irregulars might make out of a fully stocked laundry room. He frowned at the blankets and pillows heaped about his body, then blinked back up at Watson. A slow meandering of his thoughts turned up no recollection of how he had ended up on the floor, nor of how this mess had appeared around him.

Watson sighed and shook his head in something akin to disappointment and yet too guilt-induced to truly be so. He shuffled and patted his hands along the blankets and pillows, shook Holmes' tattered old dressing gown from the mess and laid it over the footboard of his bed, then stopped all extraneous motion to withdraw the syringe he had apparently been looking for all along. He held it aloft in the weak light cast in through the open door from the illuminated sitting room beyond. "What happened to only ever using this to ease the ennui?"

Had he been bored when he took that from his hidden drawer? No, certainly not. There had been too much stimulation, rather than not enough; his entire mind had been a jumble, and he had not been able to think. "It clarifies, Watson." There; that explained it. He had said as much before, after all. "I required it." The words were all wrong, rounded and soft-edged like a drunken slur. He was certain that he had not said them that way, but they sounded like it, regardless. Perhaps there was some chemical agent in the air, distorting the passage of sound.

"Oh," Watson replied, sarcasm tinting the edges of the sound until it drew out beyond its natural conclusion. His brows twitched up, causing the skin around his eyes to pull smooth. "And just how much clarity are we feeling now?"

Holmes frowned. "That is immaterial. I needed it."

Watson's mouth twisted up into a hidden squiggle beneath his mustache; Holmes could not interpret it when it retreated there. "I see. We are going to have a talk about this once your wits have been returned to you."

A tiny thread of anger, defensive in nature, wound its way up from Holmes' stomach to prickle in the region of his diaphragm. "You are not my keeper."

The pert response to that was, "Someone has to be."

Unspoken were the words Holmes recalled Watson saying to him – days or weeks ago, he could not recall – while neatly enfolded against Watson's chest on the floor with a cooling cup of tea discarded nearby, and the sharpness of angry shouting still hanging heavy in the air. _Just leave it to me, alright? I'll keep you... _An unfinished sentence, but left to stand as such, all the same, and then repeated. _I'll keep you._ Finality. Whether he had realized it before now or not, Holmes had been clutching that declaration close to his chest ever since. _I'll keep you._ Someone would keep him. Someone wanted to. "Yes, but only you," Holmes mumbled distractedly.

"Don't worry, I'm horrible at delegation; my superiors always said as much." Watson set the needle aside somewhere outside of the sphere of Holmes' vision, then perched himself in a crouch on the balls of his feet. He managed to lift Holmes by the armpits and shove him to sit unsteadily upright, leaning against the frame of his bed. The room spun out of focus and lurched a thick groan from Holmes' throat. God, he hoped he was not about to be sick. A pinch to the back of his hand made him flinch.

"You're dehydrated," Watson muttered, his tone one of accusation, "and you smell like a sick room." He was moving things about now, folding blankets and setting them aside for a washing. His limbs jerked through their movements, angry and abbreviated, and his harsh breathing betrayed the onset of a truly foul temper.

Holmes felt thick like quilts or pudding, and his face was full like a head cold. "Watson?" He watched the blurry form of his friend and flatmate grow still by degrees. "Watson, I am sorry I broke your chair. And I will buy you a new book, only…don't be cross with me. I deserve your ire, but…it is unpleasant and distracting, and if you would see it within yourself to perhaps…grant a reprieve, I should be very grateful. Because...because, you see..." Holmes struggled after the words that would make Watson understand, but they would not come to him in this half-lucid haze, not the sorts of words that normal people used. The sorts that Watson used. But then, Watson was not entirely normal anymore, was he? And he knew what Holmes meant even in the times when Holmes himself could not explain his own mind. "Everyone else is oysters, and there is only the one of you. Do you understand?" Holmes paused to observe the change in Watson's breathing pattern, the staccato upset of an inconstant rhythm. "Watson?"

Watson gripped his knees near to where they rested on the floor, and bowed over them. "How in god's name can you be so bloody _thick_?" And suddenly, there were hands gripping Holmes' head hard enough to bruise for a moment before Watson's fingers moved to grip savagely at the hair around Holmes' ears. "You have been in here for _three days_, Holmes! I left you alone because I thought it was what you needed, but when you didn't answer me, and I came in here just now and saw you _lying on the floor_, I thought you were _dead_!" He punctuated this last statement with a viscious shake for each syllable, and Holmes only refrained from yelping in shock because the sharp burst of nausea at the movement stole his breath. "Don't you _ever_ lock me out of this room again – _do you understand_? I will let you be if that is what you want; I will sleep upstairs and I will observe strict gentlemen's habits. I will not even hinder your pursuit of destructive means. But you will not close me out, Holmes. This is non-negotiable. Do this to me again, and _I will leave you_. Is that…_perfectly_…clear?"

Watson could hardly speak in comprehensible words at this point; he seemed overcome by an excess of emotion, and there were wet marks streaking his cheeks. Holmes had rarely been so terrified. Watson was crying. No, Watson was not just crying, he was crying _at Holmes_. They were both shaking, though in Holmes' case it was mostly the reaction to the last of the cocaine searing his veins on its way from his body, and his profound need for sugar water. That did not negate the impact that Watson's ultimatum had on him – on them both. Holmes could read the sincerity plain as day in the shivering of Watson's lips and the stubborn flare of his nostrils. He would leave. If Holmes did not abide by his term, Watson would leave. And then Holmes would be crushed by oysters.

Watson blinked a few times as if just now becoming aware of his position, of the manner in which he had grabbed at Holmes to hold him captive to an hysterical tirade. He flushed, a delicate pink stain high on his cheekbones like ink bleeding up from the underside of a wet sheet of paper. His eyes dropped and he loosened his hold, petting Holmes' hair as much back into place as its sweat-soaked, unwashed state allowed. "Right, then," he croaked, and had to clear his throat in order to say anything further. "The first order is for you to drink and then eat something. After that, a bath; you're offensive."

Holmes allowed his eyes to once again lose focus as Watson withdrew and rocked backwards on his heels in order to rise from the floor. He watched Watson's feet move back and forth as he tidied, clad in an old pair of brown house shoes that only barely poked out from beneath the hem of his dressing gown.

An indeterminate amount of time later, Watson crouched down in front of Holmes and drew his attention with a single fingertip touched to Holmes' jaw. "Holmes. Have you been listening?"

Holmes wobbled where he sat, his vision flickering and covered in a watery glaze. "I was thinking."

"Ah." Watson smiled in that manner he had that betrayed the affection he harbored for Holmes. There was also sadness in it, and not the young kind. "I see. I was just saying that Lestrade sent a telegram this morning. He wishes to call on us at half past nine. You can remain in here if you prefer; I can tell him you are ill."

"No," Holmes replied, then blinked in confusion at the desperate tinge to the denial, which came too quickly on the heels of Watson's statement. "No," he repeated, more controlled this time. "Does he have a case for us?"

Watson pressed his lips together, his smile more like a grimace this time. "He didn't say, only that he prayed we would consent to see him."

"Oh." Holmes could feel it when his face fell, but even if he hadn't, he would have known for the echo of it in Watson's expression. "Well, no matter. We can find our own cases."

Watson gave a distracted nod and hitched a shoulder in the direction of the sitting room. "Come on. Food and a bath, remember?"

As Watson started to rise, Holmes grabbed him by the first thing he could reach, which turned out to be the collar of his dressing gown. Watson winced as he crumpled back to the floor, one hand out to steady himself so that he did not overbalance. Without conscious volition, Holmes' other hand migrated up to pat one of Watson's cheeks in what, from anyone else, probably would have been a condescending gesture. "Watson…you must understand…"

"It's alright," Watson interrupted, his voice a soothing murmur close enough to Holmes' face that Holmes could feel the brush of a warm exhalation against the side of his nose. "I do. I don't need any more words."

"Then…we are settled?"

"It is already forgotten, old cock."

Holmes nodded a few times, unaccountable for the nervous quality of the motion. "I will replace your chair." He had already said it, but it bore repeating for some reason. It was very urgent in Holmes' mind that Watson should be appeased somehow. "And your book, if you wish it."

At that, Watson reached up to uncurl Holmes' fingers from around his collar. He pressed Holmes' hands together and breathed on one of them, then said very quietly without lifting his head, "I have no desire ever to see that book again, Holmes. I agree wholeheartedly with its destruction." Then he looked up, finally meeting Holmes' eyes, his mouth quirked in an obscure smile that tangled in with his mustache. "My chair, however…"

Holmes grinned; it was quite an unexpected reaction. "You shall have mine until we find you a suitable replacement."

"Accepted." Watson smiled again, something sly and companionable that made Holmes feel warm again, despite the chill left behind in his blood from the dwindling effects of the cocaine. "Now come; you are nowhere near presentable enough to greet Lestrade."

* * *

To Watson's eyes, Holmes looked a wreck. Sallow-faced with sunken, bruised eyes, and an odd vacancy about his complexion. The puncture wounds marring the pale skin of his forearm put Watson off just as much as they always did, but he insisted on cleansing them with alcohol and checking for evidence of infection, and for weakness in the veinous walls. This was a new act on his part, and Holmes took obvious notice of it. Normally, in the wake of such destructive episodes, Watson comported himself as if nothing had occurred save that Holmes had been quiet for a few days. The pointed notice of the needle marks, the calm treatment of them, sent Holmes into a wary watchfulness that persisted well after Watson had completed his ministrations.

Perhaps, Watson thought for only a bare moment, his persecution of Holmes for this vice should be reigned back. If Holmes could not trust Watson to even swab the pinpricks, much less speak aloud on the issue without pitching a fit, then he would not likely come to Watson in the event that something went wrong with an injection. Watson needed to know that Holmes would come to him if he needed help, no matter what he had done to put himself in such a position.

They would speak on that later, Watson decided, and he would ensure that Holmes understood that he could seek assistance without fear of reprisal, however much it may irk Watson to hold his tongue in the face of Holmes' blatant abuse of his brilliant mind. One could only lead a horse to water, after all. If Holmes were ever going to overcome this addiction that he had cultivated out of the need for relief from the black moods and ignorance of the side effects of his choice drug, he would have to do so of his own wanting. It would kill Watson to stand idle when he knew that perhaps not even Holmes himself recognized the quagmire he had put himself in by self medication of his darkest fits, but by god, he would do it. For as long as it took. And he would hope with the greatest fervency that he did not have to wait so long that Holmes, either by accident or design, ruined himself by it.

The bath took precedence in the end, if only because Holmes finally realized, via the benefit of his returning faculties, that even he could barely stand his own odor. Three days wearing the same clothes, subsisting on cocaine and cold tea and toasts of crust pilfered from Watson's picked-over breakfast trays tended to make one rather pungent.

Lestrade arrived just as they finished breakfast, of which Holmes did consent to consume a fair amount in exchange for not having to drink a tonic. Watson considered this a fair enough trade, of course. Holmes looked better already, and he seemed nearly back to his usual, alert self, even if he was still slow about his movements. Watson tried not to be obvious about how he watched Holmes add copious amounts of sugar to his third cup of tea until it could not possibly have been considered palatable by any proper Englishman. Or even an improper one, at that.

Watson let the curtain fall back into place over the sitting room window as he turned back to face Holmes. "Lestrade's here. I can still send him away."

Holmes was frowning down at the newspaper spread out on the table before him, held in place with teacups and spoons on one side, the sugar bowl and a pastry plate on the other. Only crumbs remained of the pastry, though Holmes had barely touched his eggs. It wasn't clear whether he was actually reading the paper or not. "Describe his attire."

Watson sighed. "Holmes, if you want to deduce his reason for calling, go have a look for yourself."

A grunt answered that, and Watson nodded because really, he had expected no less. He cast an extra glance back, however, as he made his way to the sitting room door, assessing Holmes' mood to the best of his ability. Holmes kept his back to the room, leaving Watson to wait while Lestrade climbed the seventeen stairs, and then to force a terse if civil greeting past his lips.

Lestrade did look rather uncomfortable, standing there amidst one man's hostility and another's complete lack of notice. "I'll just get right to it then, shall I?" He bounced on his feet in that nervous manner he had, his hands clasped behind him on the brim of his bowler hat. "We need Mister Holmes' expertise on something that came up this morning."

"Oh?" Holmes inquired archly, to all appearances still engrossed in the paper. Watson could tell that whether or not he had actually been reading it over breakfast, it was now no more than a prop. "Not afraid to be shown up by a madman, then?"

"You've always been mad," Lestrade replied. "Doesn't mean you're no good at what you do." The moment the barb came out, well-intentioned toward teasing as it had been, Lestrade grimaced and took a step back as if to distance himself from his faux pas. In the past, such a comment would have made Holmes smile in the very least, even if only with his mouth.

Now, Holmes merely narrowed his eyes and then sniffed into his paper, but Watson caught the subtle sort of huddling quality to his posture. "As you say, Inspector."

Watson shut his eyes for a moment. "Inspector, I am not really all that inclined to be cordial at the moment. Either come to your point or kindly leave us in peace."

Lestrade nodded, drew in a long breath, and then said, "I, ah…Mister Holmes, I owe you an apology for the other day. My behavior was unprofessional and I do hope that we can come to an accord on the matter because, you see, we do need you on this one."

That drew the complete focus of Holmes' attention, and from the manner in which Lestrade fidgeted, it discomfited him. His voice only a shade short of threatening, Holmes demanded, "Explain."

"We found a body this morning, washed up along the Thames." Lestrade took several pieces of paper from the document folder he had been carrying and passed them over. "Bludgeoned to death."

In a careless maneuver that only Watson knew was a put-on, Holmes took the crime scene notes and passed them unread to Watson.

"Right, then," Watson said, shuffling through to scan the pertinent parts. "The body has been in the water for several days already. It is partially decomposed and considering that state, the murder could have taken place as much as a week ago."

"Interesting, perhaps," Holmes remarked, his attention once again fixed, to all outward appearance, on his newspaper. His eyes did not move to scan the text, however, and he was tapping a spoon against his tea saucer in a maddeningly irregular rhythm. "But in the normal course of business, hardly the sort of thing that might interest me. Why are you really here, Lestrade?"

Lestrade fidgeted, a fact that did not escape Holmes' notice though he remained indifferent to the inspector's presence. "It's the beggar who witnessed to those buggers dragging you into the alley. His identification of the three is what got them put away."

Holmes' restless fingers ceased their motion.

"Will you come?"

Holmes very deliberately folded his newspaper back into its original, perfectly creased lines, and held it out until Watson took it from him, to be added to the pile already threatening to topple off the edge of the credenza in the corner behind them near the scrapbooks and event files.

Watson eyed Holmes with concern, but he faced Lestrade to ask, "You believe that this has something to do with the attack on Holmes?" He would not consider the fact that he had been within a hundred yards of the man just three days earlier - that he may have been able to save his life, or at least garner the information that ended up getting him killed. If that were the case, here – if he were killed for what he had witnessed, perhaps to something left out of his testimony. Perhaps to the presence of an additional man.

Best not to theorize in advance of the facts; Holmes would twit him over it if he caught wind of any odd notions on Watson's face.

Lestrade shook his head. "We have no idea what to think, Doctor. It's suspicious, is all, considering the circumstances and who the victim is. Look, Mister Holmes, we're keeping the scene intact for you. If you'll come…" He made a helpless gesture and looked to Watson for a cue on what to do next.

Watson cocked his head in the direction of the fireplace and Lestrade retreated far enough to give them a semblance of privacy. Once Lestrade had politely turned his back, Watson knelt down and removed the tea spoon from Holmes' frozen hand. "Talk to me. What are you thinking? This is a good thing is it not? I mean…well, a man is dead, but still. It could be proof of a deeper business, or at the very least, a distraction to give you something to do."

"Yes," Holmes murmured, his eyes that luminous, washed-out hue that they shaded toward when he was trying not to jump to a disastrous conclusion in absence of proper evidence. "Watson, I fear I may have made a grave error."

"What?" Watson set the tea spoon aside and tried – failed – to catch Holmes' eye. "What do you mean?"

Rather than answering, Holmes pushed his chair back and stood, stepping around Watson to reach the window. He shoved the curtains apart and examined the street below for several long moments. Then he very deliberately turned back and reached for his jacket, which he had draped over the back of his chair. "Come, Watson."

"Wait. Holmes?" Watson grabbed his own jacket and shot Lestrade a baffled look as they both hurried to keep up with Holmes' form disappearing down the stairs. They only barely made it out the front door before Watson noticed the beginning of a reaction of a some sort. He slipped his arm into Holmes' before his difficulty became noticeable and guided him along the sidewalk toward the waiting carriage. Sotto voce, he murmured, "Are you alright?"

"Yes," Holmes bit back. "Fine."

"You're sweating terribly all of a sudden."

"I said I am _fine_, Watson, just get me to the carriage."

_Yes, because needing help finding a carriage door certainly qualified one as fine. _Watson kept his mouth shut though because there was no point in using sarcasm on Holmes; it either irritated him into a right strop, or failed to register at all. "Right, here we are." He opened the door and waited until Holmes had climbed inside before looking about the street in hopes of seeing whatever it was that had so unnerved Holmes when he had looked down from the sitting room window.

Watson noticed nothing out of the ordinary, however; several of their neighbors were out sweeping snow from their doorways. The barber shop on the next block was open as usual, as was the druggist on the other side of the street. There was a line out the door of the telegraph office at the corner. A few hansoms clattered on by as Watson watched, wheels kicking brown slush up from the ruts they ran through. There was a closed carriage stopped two doors down from their own, the horse covered in a blanket and the driver on his bench looking bored. And of course, there were a dozen or so children running about, only half of them attended to by adults. The rest were members of Holmes' little army of loyal hangers-on. Even as Watson spotted them one after another, they waved or smiled or otherwise acknowledged his notice.

One of the older boys, at least Cartright's age if not more, stepped out from a doorway and crushed a cigarette out on the pavement. This one was to be their unofficial escort, then, Watson guessed. The young man nodded as if to confirm this and stuck his hat on his head at the jaunty angle common to Holmes' street urchins. Come to think of it, Watson had not seen Cartright in several days. Perhaps the boy had found some paying work; many people had odd jobs that needed doing around the holidays. It would do the boy good to have a steady source of income for a little while.

Watson glanced over at Holmes, who sat stiff and unmoving on the bench beside him, then across to Lestrade, who had by now joined them in the carriage. Watson ventured to ask, "Where exactly are we going?"

"The Regent's Canal Dock in Limehouse, on the Thames." Lestrade paused as if awaiting comment, then cast a surreptitious glance to his right at Holmes's silence before continuing. "The coroner's initial report conjectures that the body was washed down the river and then swept up in the wake of one of the narrowboats using the locks to enter the canal." He again looked to Holmes, this time with an uncertain cast to his features.

Watson nodded once and looked out the carriage window as the horses kicked up. He wished that Lestrade were not here so that he could press Holmes for an explanation of his odd behavior; they should have followed after Lestrade in a cab. Then again, perhaps Holmes' reticence was perfectly natural in this situation. They were, after all, skirting a delicate issue and strife over the situation had abounded for weeks now. This could not have been comfortable for Holmes to endure, and today would mark their first foray into Yard business since the assault. A bit of an adjustment period should be expected.

The carriage ride felt interminable. Holmes did not even twitch as they passed along streets and under bridges, his eyes focused yet unmoving, unseeing. Watson watched him openly, though for signs of what, he could not have said. In Watson's periphery, Lestrade fidgeted with his hat, then his gloves, trying to be inconspicuous about pointedly not looking at either of them. A knife may not even have been sharp enough to slice through the tension that hung thick in the chill air.

Watson felt a dark sort of satisfaction at seeing Lestrade so nervous in their presence, but after a while, his better nature won out. In an effort to defuse some of the awkwardness, he asked, "What exactly is it that you believe Holmes can tell you about the scene?"

Lestrade bit his lip briefly in what appeared, on the surface at least, to be relief. Then he sighed quietly and looked just as weary as a poorly rested man should. "For starters, it would be nice to know where he went into the water. We might be able to trace his steps back to his killer, if we knew where to start."

"Do you have a theory at present?"

"Not as such," Lestrade replied. He leaned his head back against the wall of the carriage, then slanted his eyes sideways to peer at Holmes. It must have seemed strange to him, being able to observe Holmes but not being observed and dissected in return, for his features turned first pensive and then troubled. "It looks like a petty theft on the surface – one beggar kills another for a bit of pocket change or a nice coat. If it weren't for the bloke having been a witness to Mister Holmes' assault, we wouldn't give it a second look. We just… I want to be sure." He looked at Watson when his words evoked no response from Holmes. "I need to be sure."

Watson did not reply, as anything he could not have done so nicely. In any case, it was probably not his place. Instead, he settled his eyes back on the side of Holmes' head in an effort to determine just how much attention Holmes was paying to the conversation. Holmes often feigned to woolgather, but he ever seemed to have an uncanny awareness of the events occurring around him.

And yet, when Watson cleared his throat and touched his fingers to the inside of Holmes' elbow, Holmes startled. Once he had swallowed back some irregularity of breath, Holmes glared at Watson and looked affronted.

At that uncharacteristic and unheard of reaction, Inspector present or no, Watson turned sideways on the bench to regard his friend. "Alright, out with it. What have we missed?"

For once, no acerbic commentary about observing and deducing for himself made its way from Holmes' lips. He simply shook his head once, looked away out the window and…diminished, somehow.

Watson glanced at Lestrade as if to detect a lead there, but Lestrade simply looked bewildered, so Watson dismissed him and pressed Holmes, "Is it because of who the victim is?" He leaned forward before he realized that he was crowding Holmes, then cleared his throat and sat back again when Holmes shifted just enough to eye him in a wary manner. "Is it the reminder? You have to talk to me, Holmes. I cannot be of any help to you if I do not know what is going on."

"It is surely nothing," Holmes murmured. "At present, I have no data with which to work. I know nothing aside from what was written in the preliminary report."

"But…you suspect something?" Watson canted his head and caught a glimpse of their Irregular escort loping along the sidewalk at an easy pace. "Holmes?"

"Have you seen Cartright lately? He was not outside our flat this morning."

For an indiscernible reason, Watson felt a chill start low in his spine. "I…no, I imagine he found some work for the season. Why?"

"No reason. I have not seen him either; I simply thought it possible that I had overlooked him."

Watson blinked a few times and then shifted to sit straight in his seat again. He glanced out of the window on his own side of the carriage, and then with a sigh, he fished his notebook from his jacket pocket and licked the end of the stylus which he always carried tucked between the pages. Let Holmes keep his secrets, if that was the way he wanted it. Lord knew, he had never been in the habit of total disclosure when a case beckoned; it was simply habit for him to hold his deductions in reserve for a grand unveiling later. Watson would not begrudge him that pleasure, if that was indeed what he hoped to gain from such deflective tactics now.

They reached the Reagent's Canal Dock half an hour later, without further incident or conversation. Once there, Holmes loitered beside the carriage while Lestrade went to speak with his men. Holmes appeared to be surveying the overall scene, but there was a tentative quality to his scrutiny that did not fit with his normal crime scene procedure. Again, Watson chalked his behavior up to the awkwardness of returning to his work amongst people who knew a very personal secret about him and could thereby make him uncomfortable by it. It would pass; of this, Watson was sure. Holmes would quickly find his stride and by his usual personality, irritate everyone around him into fits of frustration and temper. There would be no mollycoddling, no pitying looks, and no platitudes or misplaced condolences; Holmes, by his very existence, seemed to repel such sentiments from his person. Talk of that other matter would never come up.

"Right, then," Lestrade called, making his way back to them. "We have no murder weapon, but the coroner believes from the pattern and depth of the wounds that it may have been a brick, or a similarly shaped cut stone with sharp corners. It's probably still at the actual murder scene. Anything you can do to point us to it, Mister Holmes, would be appreciated."

"I assume that you have already tried his regular haunt? The corner he occupies for his trade?"

"What?" Lestrade asked, indignant. "You mean his begging post? I was there this morning, before I sent the telegram on to you. Really, Mister Holmes; I am not a complete imbecile."

Holmes' nose crinkled with a brand of distaste that was unusual for him in this context. "That remains to be seen. What did you learn this morning?"

Rather than puff up like a porcupine, which Lestrade appeared to want to do very badly, he crossed his arms and bounced on his toes to dispel his irritation. "He was seen as usual by the people living about the area, as well as by the local business owners and street folk. Normally, he stays all night to catch the blokes coming out of the pubs and such, too sauced to know how much they're dropping into his cup. That flower girl said he was approached by a young man just after midnight. The two spoke, then argued a bit, and finally walked off together. We traced them back to the beggar's doss, but they didn't stay there; another tenant witnessed them leave less than ten minutes later. And that was the last anyone saw of either of them." He paused, passing a critical eye over Holmes' silent poise. "We figure that the young man lured him off somewhere, maybe had some friends waiting, and that they did the man in once they were away from prying eyes. I don't know what he could have had, though, to make it worth the bother. According to the flower girl, he didn't have two bits to rub together, not after he paid for his board each morning, such as it was." Lestrade hesitated again, this time less discerning and more worried. "Mister Holmes?"

Holmes was busy flitting his gaze about, seemingly at random, his lips sucked in between his teeth. He responded to Watson's hand on his shoulder by giving him a weak smile, and then he set about picking his way down the embankment to where the body lay in a depression of extremely soft and sucking mud mixed with the bilge sewage kicked up and expelled by the boat engines which travelled through the lock in droves each day. Watson followed after him, fitting his feet into the prints that Holmes left behind; it did little to ease his going, and even less to protect his pant legs from the muck. He should have worn an older pair of trousers.

Once they reached the flat expanse of river silt, they could walk on planks set out by the Yard men. Watson made a vain attempt to scrape the worst of the filth from his shoes, but stopped his efforts abruptly upon noticing that Holmes had stilled just in front of him with both of his hands, balled into his shirt cuffs, pressed to his nose and mouth. His eyes were clenched shut and he appeared to be shivering just enough that Watson, trained to notice such things, saw it course through his rigid frame in a single wave.

Watson resigned himself to remaining filthy and approached Holmes slowly, lest he startle the man. "Holmes? All right, old boy?"

Holmes sucked a ragged breath in through the fabric of his shirtsleeves and blinked owlishly at the empty air before him.

Another tentative step brought Watson within arm's reach, yet he still refrained from contact. "Can you tell me what's the matter?"

Holmes began to tremble and squeezed his eyes shut again. Into his hands, his words muffled but still clear enough to understand, he replied, "The smell." It came out barely audible across the negligible space between them, small and tin-toned like water sloughed into a metal can.

The smell, like rotting refuse and sewer water, pervaded the air all about them. Filth and dead things and chemical solvents from the warehouses, mixed with the sickly sweet scent of the Thames. "Alright," Watson breathed. He glanced aside long enough to see that they were attracting curious stares, then stepped up behind Holmes and gripped him by the upper arms. "Come; we're done here."

Holmes shook his head violently and refused to be backed away.

"You cannot work like this, Holmes. We can assist from the road; they can bring the body to you up there for examination before they take it to the morgue."

"It will still smell of it if they bring it up there!" Holmes opened his eyes and Watson close enough to see both the reddened rims of his lids and the stubborn determination to have his way. "And they will surely make a mess of it in the process; I need to study him _here_, undisturbed." His hands lowered in a forced gesture, driven only by the obstinacy of his will, and Watson made no comment as Holmes swayed backwards for a moment before regaining his equilibrium; he simply accepted the extra weight and steadied him upright again.

"Easy," Watson murmured, his voice pitched low so that it would not carry. From his vantage point, he could just see the brightness in Holmes' eyes and spared a moment to worry for the mania that seemed to be threatening from within Holmes' mind. "Breathe through your mouth, slowly. You are perfectly safe here. It's a crime scene."

Holmes nodded, his jaw set in a grim line caused by the gritting of his teeth. They must see this through; Holmes would never consent to slink off back to Baker Street like a cowed hound. "Yes. And you…" He cut himself off – from appearances and his wince, by actually biting down on his tongue. Then he drew on some reserve other than one of strength and turned his head far enough to be able to see Watson in his periphery. "You will remain with me?" he murmured, too quietly for anyone else to hear and bear witness to what was evidently embarrassing him quite a bit; the tops of his ears had pinkened, though the rest of his face remained pale, almost pasty from the effects of his binge these past three days. "You will not wander off?"

Watson nodded and pitched his voice to the same quality. "One step behind you," he said with a wistful smile. "With my revolver in my pocket."

Holmes breathed out, long and deep, and faced the flatland again. He had smiled back, though, no matter that it had been a fleeting and uncertain thing.

If they must do this, then for mercy's sake, Watson preferred the business completed as soon as possible. "Focus on the details, Holmes. The body is just ahead of you, there. Tell me what you see. Observe for me."

Holmes inhaled several times in the manner of a fish gulping in the open air, then swallowed hard enough that his nausea was evident. "Single blow to the back of the head, from above; the murderer was at least six inches taller than the victim, and used an overhead strike with considerable force. He was likely a manual laborer, to have the strength to drive a rock so deeply into another man's skull. Also, not squeamish; accustomed to getting his hands dirty. There would have been a considerable amount of blood and tissue spatter. The murderer could not have avoided dirtying himself with it. But he was not precise, so he did not have much knowledge of anatomy; he relied on the force of the blow to do its job, rather than the placement of it."

"Good," Watson soothed. He rubbed gently up and down the outsides of Holmes' upper arms, depleting the force of the tremors that shook him. "What else?"

Holmes' body ticked once, rather sharply, and then a small amount of tension bled out from beneath Watson's hands. "Someone tried to pull him from the water before he washed up here. His trousers are blackened with silt from initially having been dragged through the shallows, as are his cuffs, hands and face, and the front of his shirt. His back and his sleeves, however, are relatively clean in comparison. Additionally, the air is chill this time of year, and he is absent a coat; even a beggar would dress in more than just shirtsleeves at the onset of November. Whoever attempted to save him must have grabbed him by his coat, which came off in the process."

"Could he not have been robbed for his coat?" Watson could remember it from the glimpse he had gotten three days ago near the Punch Bowl - a great black thing the color of soot, and perhaps covered in that very material to make it so dark.

"No." Holmes shook his head and seemed to regret it when it unsteadied him. Watson's fingers tightened momentarily, and then Holmes explained, "No, he was dumped in the river first, before he lost the coat. Otherwise, his sleeves at the very least would have been as dirtied by the mud as the rest of him. You can see the clear line above his cuffs, which denotes the length of a coat sleeve, which incidentally was not long enough for his frame. His shirt is wet but comparatively clean above it."

"And the silt," Watson prompted when Holmes fell silent and his respirations began to turn shallow. "Where did he acquire the silt?"

"Some…somewhere upstream, not the site of the bludgeoning. He would have been dragged through it to the river, across a shallows most likely, and dumped; whoever attempted the rescue would not likely have done so from a shallows, as that would have dragged at least parts of the body through a second subset of mud and particulate waste. It is more probable that the attempt was made from an embankment wall, where the water would have been too deep to allow the person to enter the river in order to obtain a firm grip on the body. He snagged at it, you see – at the coat."

"Which came off, leaving the body to float out of reach." Watson nodded, his fingers kneading now at Holmes' biceps. "And the silt, Holmes. Where did it originate?"

Holmes inhaled sharply, his muscles jerking in a myoclonic twitch. "The only embankment site which is graced by currents strong enough to pull a body from its clothing is that which runs along High Street at the Black Eagle Wharf."

"Good," Watson encouraged, but he was frowning over this obsession with the rescue attempt, as opposed to the murder site. "But the silt, old boy. Where is it from? We need to know where he was originally dumped."

Holmes remained in place, staring blankly into the scene and just to the left of the body. "I think…Hermitage. There is rock particulate crusted in with the mud on his clothing – granite, I believe, from the workhouse there." He swallowed, and in the midst of it, blinked in an exaggerated fashion. His nostrils flared and Watson watched the bob of his adam's apple, a thing not connected to the effort at swallowing, but to the rise of bile. "John, get me out of here. Now."

The use of his Christian name galvanized Watson into action before his thoughts could intrude and complicate matters. He twisted around the pivot of Holmes' body, switching his and Holmes' places so that he could better maneuver Holmes away from the stench of the scene, as well as be in a position to catch him up under the arms in the event that his steps faltered. It seemed as if everyone had an idea of what was going on, but all they did was step out of Watson's way so that he and Holmes could pass as quickly as possible. In fact, the deliberate lack of notice was disconcerting.

They made it back to the carriage without incident, and Watson stood guard like an old bull dog with his cane at the ready while Holmes bent over with his hands on his knees, gulping at the fresh air in an effort to eradicate the roiling of his stomach. He was, thankfully, not sick, but it was a near thing, and when Holmes finally straightened, he nearly fainted from the displacement of blood. Watson had to seize him by the elbow and take his weight long enough for his vision to unblacken and his legs to hold him properly.

Lestrade only appeared after Holmes had perched himself on a carriage wheel and Watson had released his arm in order to extract his cigarette case from the inner breast pocket of his greatcoat. He waited through Watson's lighting of two fags, declined the offer of a third, and then watched with an odd expression on his face as Watson passed one of the burning cigarettes to Holmes, a steady hand to one which seemed nerveless in its fumbling. "All right there, Mister Holmes?"

"We must go to the Black Eagle Wharf at once." Rather than raising the cigarette to his lips, Holmes bent himself down toward his hand and inhaled with something like desperation to feel the minor rush of burning tobacco.

The lift of Lestrade's eyebrows matched Watson's own. "But Mister Holmes, you said the murder actually occurred at Hermitage."

Watson nodded his agreement and exchanged a puzzled look with Lestrade. "Unless," Watson ventured, "you expect to find the would-be rescuer at the wharf? Do you think it possible that he saw something of the crime?"

"Or," Lestrade put in, "are we looking for his coat? There could be evidence on that, I reckon."

Holmes responded to neither of them, but squinched his eyes shut in something like pained intolerance, rubbing his thumb knuckle between his eyes with the hand holding the cigarette. "I am looking for a second body."

Lestrade made a wordless exclamation, but Watson remained completely still up until the moment he accused, "You knew from the start that there should be two bodies. That was what had you so bothered at Baker Street." Watson ghosted his tongue along the inner rim of his teeth and stole a glance at Lestrade, who appeared both taken aback and annoyed by Holmes' pronouncement. "Inspector, I believe we should go at once."

Lestrade balked, and then he narrowed his eyes at Watson as if he could ever have deduced Watson's thoughts the way that Holmes could. "Alright, but I'm sending the boys ahead to Hermitage to secure any scene they can find there."

"Fine," Holmes snapped. He whirled about to all but attack the carriage door in the process of entering it. "Whatever you think is best, _Inspector_, as we all know there is nothing I can say to convince you to do otherwise." By his tone, he made Lestrade's title an invective, and it struck home in the tightening of Lestrade's features. Apparently satisfied to have wrought that reaction, Holmes turned away and clambered into the carriage, slamming the door shut behind him savagely enough to startle the horses with the vibration of it.

Watson blinked at the carriage, then tried to act as if he weren't both bewildered and irrationally sick at the thought of what they might find at the wharf. Something bad enough to send Holmes' theorizations flying in six separate directions, data present or not. What could he have seen in the evidence, the coroner's report, Lestrade's summary, to affect him thus?

Lestrade cleared his throat and met Watson's answering glance with a modicum of awkwardness. "Shall I follow separately, then?" His manner was frank, even in the way it obviously saddened him to abruptly find himself thrust outside of that sphere that marked what passed for friendly acquaintanceship in the strange world of Sherlock Holmes.

Rather than respond, Watson averted his gaze and sighed his hand where it curled over the head of his cane. "Inspector, I'm sure you understand that this is…Holmes is simply…" Watson trailed off while his mind groped after and discarded a number of descriptive phrases. Finally, he settled for, "It is difficult for him."

"Yes," Lestrade agreed without reservation. He pursed his lips in discomfort then, and made a nonspecific gesture with one hand, perhaps to give expression to the awkward atmosphere. Barely audible, Lestrade finally confessed, "I know what his mind means to him; his reason is both a terrible and a beautiful thing. It's frightening at times, the way he sees the world. I never intended to make him doubt himself."

"Others got to that goal before you," Watson countered, unable to stop himself. "You've no idea what sorts of things he has taken to questioning lately."

"Just the same," Lestrade pressed. "Look, I like Mister Holmes. He is impossible and completely beyond my reckoning, but he's not a bad man. Just the opposite, really." He shook his head then, seemingly at a loss for how to handle the current situation. "But this…" Again, he shook his head, but he ended the motion this time with his eyes on Watson's. "I don't even know what to think anymore. This business should be over and done with. The case file's been closed, the men responsible are on their way to Bedford…" He flung an open hand in the direction of the river. "What am I supposed to make of this, Doctor?"

_Consider that you may have made a mistake_, was the first response that came to mind. Lestrade seemed to be considering that already, however; Watson's stating it aloud would not help matters. "Perhaps," Watson suggested quietly, "we should simply make the journey to Black Eagle Wharf and leave the analysis for later. It could be nothing, after all. A coincidence – one unfortunate killing another for the sake of a warmer coat on a cold night."

Lestrade nodded as if in agreement, but what he said, too low to carry farther than the two of them, was, "I don't think either of us believe that any more than Mister Holmes seems to. There is some bad business going on here. Truth be told, I'm starting to think that it's been going on all along – that Mister Holmes was right, god help me."

"There will be time for that later," Watson told him, indicating the cab, and by extension, the thin trail of cigarette smoke creeping out through the curtain covering the open window. What he really wanted to do was punch the man for saying such a thing only after sending Holmes into a fit with assertions of the opposite. Then again, even Holmes had said that were he an outside observer, he would have doubted his testimony as to the number of assailants. It was a sobering thought, that even Holmes could find no certainty in this business. And Watson was not yet prepared to confront the ramifications of that, no matter what the truth of things came out to be in the end.

To all appearances, Holmes dozed during the ride to Black Eagle Wharf, but Watson knew him too well to be fooled by it. When Holmes napped, he did so bonelessly, sprawled out over every surface within reach of his gangly limbs. He could never have maintained the rigidity necessary to stay upright in his seat if he were truly asleep. Watson suspected that his recent association with his beloved needle could be blamed for his current state, eyes closed, respirations shallow and slow. He could not have been feeling well at this point, not starved for the drug as his body must surely have been by then. From the tremors displayed earlier and the current pallid cast to his complexion, Watson estimated that his last injection had taken place sometime the night before. Granted, some of his difficulty could be attributed to emotional or nervous reactions, but not all of it; Holmes was not usually, by nature, an hysterical sort, for all that the recent months had been trying for him.

Watson also suspected that Holmes had only sobered this morning because his supply of cocaine had finally run out. Watson's insistence on rising and seeing to the normal morning pursuits of a gentlemen were coincidental to that. And at some point the previous night, Holmes had clearly injected too potent a solution to have left him nonsensical on the floor long enough for Watson to find him like that. At this moment, however, that was not at issue, and Watson would wait to address it.

They arrived in due course at Black Eagle Wharf, and after a sort of flighty scurrying about by the waterline, Holmes subsided into brooding silence. Indeed, he seemed to lose interest in the proceedings entirely, except that Watson could veritably feel him thinking. Lestrade was understandably annoyed by this behavior, though he also betrayed a bit of concern by repeated glances over his shoulder to see if Holmes had moved from beside the carriage where he had at last taken up a still pose with his hands shoved deep in his pockets. He looked odd, standing there like that without a cigarette held idly in one hand. Eventually, Watson strode over to offer him one, but Holmes waved him off and went to stalk about the fronts of the buildings facing the wharf.

Finally, Lestrade heaved a great, exasperated sigh and came to stand next to Watson beside a pylon coiled with rope used for the temporary mooring of barges. "Why are we here, Doctor Watson? If I am not mistaken, not even Mister Holmes has found anything noteworthy since we arrived."

Watson only made it halfway through a shrug before Holmes abruptly left off his skulking and bounded over to them. "Is there a constable assigned to this area? Or some other form of patrol?"

"Well, yes," Lestrade replied, puzzled. "Of course there is; surely you know that."

"Yes, yes." Holmes waved a hand about as if to dispel Lestrade altogether. "We must speak to him to see if anything out of the ordinary has occurred nearby within the past week. Can that be arranged?"

Lestrade shifted to a more belligerent stance. "Now see here, Mister Holmes. This is _our_ investigation. I am not giving you leave to interrogate my officers unless you tell me what you're on about."

Holmes made a face at the gently moving water and tugged his cuffs down to cover his wrists, even though they gaped about the hinge of his thumb in the absence of cufflinks; he persisted in refusing to wear them. Under his breath, he gave an irate mutter of, "Obvious. Obvious – it is so _stupefyingly _obvious." Then to Lestrade in a normal tone, though his eyes shifted to his hands and not to the object of his conversation, Holmes spat, "This crime is nearly a week old. Why is it so difficult for you to deduce that if we wish to know of any extraordinary happenings in this area on the night of the murder, then we should speak to the constable or constables who patrolled the wharf during the time in question – what is _wrong_ with you?"

Holmes' whole body shook on that last bit with the force of his irritation, distracted though he appeared to be. His mannerisms could often seem erratic in that to outward appearance, his attention commonly wandered and flittered about as he spoke. Watson had learned to see through such inconstancies, but _this_ mood... Watson did not immediately recognize it. Holmes was not distracted. It took Watson several seconds to place part of his expression as an amorphous sort of fear, and longer still to identify the remainder as guilt.

Holmes so rarely appeared to feel guilt that it came as a bit of a shock to Watson to see it now. In fact, aside from the expression briefly apparent on his face after Watson had roused from his faint at Holmes' return from the dead - and there had been more mere apology than remorse in that one - the only other occasion upon which Watson had seen a variant of this expression was at the death of Mister Hilton Cubitt, for which Holmes partially blamed his own slow-wittedness. But in the present instance, Holmes had committed no error that Watson could perceive, either real or imagined; why, then, should he look so afraid to learn further details of this matter?

Watson glanced at Lestrade in time to motion him to silence just as he was about to retort, and then grasped Holmes by an elbow to better steer him to a private corner near the irregular join of two abutting warehouses. "Holmes, what on earth is going on? You have to tell me, old cock; your deteriorating mood is beginning to worry me. If this is because of the attention that will be drawn back to you concerning the attack, then rest assured that you will be shielded from it. I will not allow aspersions to be cast on your character for something that was beyond your control."

"Watson, if ever I am tempted to laud your increase in mental faculties, remind of this moment so that I may be cured of the impulse."

"Oh, sod off, Holmes." Though in truth, the insult stung. "Why are you so insistent on this avenue of investigation? Facts or no, I can see that you suspect something awful, and it is affecting your judgment. Now, have it out before I call Norbury."

Holmes started to reply – an unkind one, to go by the flash of an ugly expression that crossed his face. It turned instead into an abrupt sigh, and Holmes' countenance closed off along with the shutting of his eyes. "Do not make me say it, Watson. If there was no incident here, if nothing more untoward than a beggar's murder occurred, then I am merely being foolish and we can leave it at that."

Watson could not help making an impertinent reply. "And if you are not proven a fool?" There was no reply, save Holmes opening his eyes and giving Watson such a hopeless look that Watson leaned away in a burst of prescience. Finally, Watson sighed and tried to imbue the sound with his usual sufferance. "Alright. I'll convince Lestrade of the necessity of this. You wait here; any nearer and I fear you may put him off again."

A weak smile graced Holmes features; it was a short-lived thing.

In the end, it took no persuasion whatsoever; while Holmes and Watson had all but argued in the background, Lestrade had sent the carriage driver off to find the constable currently in charge of this route. Even if the man on duty had not witnessed an incident on the wharf, he would be aware of any reports made by the other officers who walked this patrol.

Holmes did not pace while they waited, which in itself was enough for not only Watson, but also Lestrade to notice. Normally, when in pursuit of a clue, Holmes could not be stilled to save his life; he fairly vibrated with the excitement of it, to the point where one might find his glee obscene. All he did now, however, was sit against the steps leading to the water and stare into space. His expression made it clear that he was not mulling over the facts of this matter; his mind had wandered clear away, and he had not seen fit to call it back.

The constable arrived after a short delay, waylaid by an attempted pick-pocketing against his own person. The nervy little bugger responsible for the transgression had run off and disappeared after scaling an alley wall – a child, so the constable had explained. The constable did not appear upset by the attempt, only saddened at the plight of such a young lad. Watson tossed a glance in Holmes' direction, as such unfortunate children had so often come into his employ for legitimate if odd jobs, but Holmes had not yet risen from the steps, and had his back to the rest of them.

Watson cleared his throat. "Right, then. Inspector?" he prompted, deferring to Lestrade.

"Yes." Lestrade faced the constable. "Now, then. A few days ago, no more than a week, there may have been an odd happening at this wharf. Do you recall anything?"

The constable's brow knitted. "Odd in what way, sir? There's always crime in these parts."

Lestrade looked to Holmes for guidance, but although Holmes had finally deigned to join them, he may as well not have bothered for all the attention he seemed to be paying them. "Um." Lestrade shook himself and addressed the constable again, his stance drawing straight as if he had, for a moment, set aside his mantle as Detective Inspector and needed to reclaim it. "We're not entirely certain. There may have been someone trying to fish something out of the water. A coat, maybe."

"Nothing like that, sir," the constable replied. "And begging your pardon, but that's not likely something that would make notice. It's not a crime to fish off the docks here, though I can't imagine anyone who'd want to eat what might be swimming in there."

Lestrade grit his teeth for a moment, eyes widened skyward with his hands clamped in irritation behind his back. "What _did_ make notice, then, eh? Come on, lad, out with it!"

The constable snapped to attention as if he had been slapped. "There was just the usual, Inspector. Muggings, a couple of rough-ups. Vandalized buildings and the like, sir. There was one bloke, stabbed for the silver of his cigarette case, but there wasn't anything off about it."

"Here," Holmes interjected without warning. He held out his notebook for the constable to look at. On a blank page, he had rendered a rather passable pencil sketch of a familiar youthful, solemn face. "Was this the stabbing victim?"

"Oh, god," Watson exclaimed, quite without meaning to. His gaze shot to Holmes' profile, the man himself distant in affect though he stood close enough for Watson to feel the aura of heat that ever surrounds living tissue.

"Why, yes, sir." The constable glanced amongst the three of them, uncertain and made wary by it. "That's the lad. I was on watch myself when it happened. Felt bad for the poor boy; he couldn't yet have passed his twentieth year."

Watson closed his eyes, both hands cupped over his nose and mouth as he shook his head in denial.

Holmes evidently tore the crude likeness from his notebook, to judge by the sound of ripping paper. "Our young Mister Cartright, Inspector. You met him, if you will recall, upon one of my visits to the Yard."

"This…" Lestrade began, and then made a wordless sound, perhaps of surprise. "Constable, tell us the whole of the matter, if you please."

"There wasn't much to it, sir," the constable replied. Watson opened his eyes in time to catch the apologetic look which he directed at the top of Holmes' bowed head. "I heard some yelling, and came upon two roughs going after the lad. It looked like the boy tried to escape them by going into the water, for when I first caught sight of them, they were dragging him away from the edge and his whole front was wet."

Watson inhaled hard through his nose and had to look away, which brought his eyesight in line with the edge of the wharf and the water beyond. That was no better.

Holmes roused himself from whatever depth of contemplation he had occasioned into, and prompted, "Pray continue, constable." His voice had the quality of gravel ground beneath a horse's hoof.

"Yes, sir. They were trying to get at his hands, sir – I imagine to the silver case – but the boy wouldn't let go of it. They were relentless, too; even after I arrived, they wouldn't leave off. I got myself a good pop too for my troubles." The constable pointed to the faded remnants of a black eye, and then shifted in discomfort. "Not that I wouldn't gladly have taken more if it could have saved the boy."

"Quite right," Watson offered faintly. He reached out by instinct to grasp Holmes' arm, then was glad that he had done so when Holmes swayed in his direction just enough to make his mental state clear.

"Anyway," the constable went on. "I managed to run those blackguards off, but not before they'd done the boy in. He died in my arms, sir, gasping for his breath. The coroner said it was a rib, driven straight through his lung." He paused and shrugged, a helpless motion tinged with sympathy and the bewilderment of one who does not truly understand the nature and pervasiveness of evil deeds. "If he'd have just let it go... That bit of silver wasn't worth his life."

Holmes nodded, still intent on his study of the cobblestones at his feet. "Did he say anything?"

"I remember it clear as day, sir. He apologized."

Watson looked up, blinking in a desperate effort to contain his grief. "Apologized? For what?"

The constable bit his lip and looked down, respectful and solemn. "For getting himself hurt. I don't rightly believe he knew who was with him at the end, there."

Holmes stiffened and sputtered, "Oh, for pity's sake," on a single ragged burst of air as he flung Watson's hand off and strode away in a furious temper. He got as far as the nearest warehouse and came to an abrupt halt, facing the crumbling brickwork of its outer wall, one hand shoved deep in his pocket and the other arm raised with the notebook in his hand as if shielding himself from an overhead blow. Just as unexpectedly, he came storming back a moment later, pointing at the constable with his notebook though he seemed unwilling to look directly at the man. "You said he was beaten for the sake of a silver case. A cigarette case, you said. Did the roughs make off with it?"

The constable shook his head, stepping back out of range of Holmes' wagging arm as he did so. "No, sir. He held it fast to the last. We couldn't even pry his fingers from it after he'd expired. I imagine it's in evidence now, awaiting a claim on the body. If you wanted to have a look at it, sir."

"Yes, I do indeed wish to have a look at it. Lestrade, you will arrange it."

It was not an unusual request, that Holmes be allowed to examine objects held in evidence, but Holmes usually displayed at least a modicum of civility in requesting access; he had never, to Watson's recollection, issued such an imperious demand of a Yard inspector before. Lestrade bristled accordingly. "Now see here, Mister Holmes."

That was as far as he got. Holmes had been walking away toward the carriage but now whirled back and if Watson had not already been standing between them, Holmes would have actually laid hands on Lestrade. "That boy is dead because he was doing _your_ _job_, Detective Inspector!"

The use of Lestrade's full title was meant as a mockery, but Lestrade did not rise to the bait; rather, he paled and looked as if he were suppressing an urge to cower. Watson gave him credit for standing his ground; Holmes could be downright fearsome in a temper.

"You can at least," Holmes continued, his tone barely short of an outright shout, "permit me to examine the cause of his murder. And if that is not acceptable to you, rest assured that I will gain access without your leave. _You_ have not the means to stop me!"

Lestrade remained still for several seconds in the wake of this verbal attack, not watching as Holmes stalked out of range for a second time and all but flung himself into the carriage. Once Holmes was no longer visible, and presumably out of earshot, Lestrade looked up and met Watson's eyes, expectant and brimming with disapproval, yet reserved in his judgment.

Watson tried to convey some sort of nonverbal apology for his friend's behavior, but a shrug was hardly adequate to the task.

"I will only excuse him so far," Lestrade warned lowly. "He has his methods, and for the most part, I can overlook the small crimes he commits in the name of the greater good. But if I discover that he has forced his way into an evidence locker… I will not shield him from that. It would mean my career if I did."

Watson knew very well that such a thing would never be sufficient to stop Holmes from a set path. "Then I suggest, Inspector, that you grant him access to the body and the evidence in this case. That boy was very dear to him, though he will never admit as much. He won't be deterred by any threat either of us could offer."

"I have no intention of barring him from this investigation," Lestrade countered. "I'm just making the boundaries clear."

Watson nodded. "As you must, Inspector."

This clearly was not the kind of response that Lestrade had been after, as he pursed his lips and gave a faint sigh through his nose. "Let's get this over with, then."

~TBC~


	12. Chapter 12

Holmes had already entirely forgotten the carriage ride back to Scotland Yard. He stood now, silent and still as stone in the morgue in the basement of St. Bartholomew's, and stared at the sheet which Lestrade had just pulled from Cartright's face. They had removed the boy's clothing in order to perform the autopsy. For long moments, Holmes could look at nothing save the Y-point of the incision, now stitched closed once again, which sectioned his chest and torso. The bin containing Cartright's personal belongings sat on the wheeled tray beside the dissection table. A new pair of shoes, unscuffed with solid soles, sat nestled atop all the rest; Holmes could see them in his periphery. They made him want to kill something.

"Holmes?" Watson touched his sleeve and moved to stand more fully beside him. His eyes were red and puffy. Holmes had not observed him weeping, and he wondered how long he had been standing here like this, to allow Watson time enough to do so, dry his face, and recover the faculty of unhindered speech.

"They have signed their death warrants," Holmes told him. It was too casual a thing to say, and too easy a manner in which to say it. Perhaps this was what normal people felt at the violent death of a…loved one? Child? Person of importance? He was not certain what Cartright had been to him. More than just a lost boy, but less than whatever it was that Cartright had believed himself to be to Holmes.

From his place at Holmes' shoulder, Watson shot Lestrade a covert glance. Assessing, that look: the soldier sizing up a man who was not currently an enemy, but who might soon become one. Holmes grasped the fingers resting on his arm and squeezed them briefly before letting them go. Watson stood down.

Lestrade cleared his throat and affected not to have heard anything as he pulled the sheet back over Cartright's face. "We could use his full name for the record."

"He had no other name," Holmes replied. He felt just as flat as he sounded. The sheet did nothing to block Holmes' view of the body; it merely occluded the surface. "His mother was surnamed Cartright; she was a prostitute and an opium addict, and is no longer living. There is no way to know who fathered the boy."

"I see." Lestrade pressed his lips together and sighed at the body. "Has he any other family we can contact?"

Holmes felt his head tilting to one side, slow like a pecan sliding through molasses. "We are his family." He indicated himself and Watson, then thought that perhaps he had better not speak on his friend's behalf in such weighted matters. He glanced to his side, questioning by the cant of his head.

Watson nodded without hesitation. "Holmes and I will claim the body, Inspector. By your leave, of course."

By his glare, Holmes dared Lestrade to defy him in this. Cartright would not be burnt to cinders in a dispassionate kiln, to be used as ashes to enrich a patch of garden soil filled with insipid, ugly little flowers, nor buried in a pauper's grave with a dozen other unnamed, unwanted, rotting carcasses. He met no challenge, however; Lestrade seemed perfectly content to give the boy over to them. Holmes nodded in recognition of this and averted his gaze. It came to rest on the bin of personal effects and he reached for it.

The shoes were set to one side, unexamined. Watson gave him a knowing look, but refrained from questioning his dismissal of the footwear. Shoes could tell one so much about a person, but the paltry amount of data that could be gleaned from Cartright's shiny new shoes, perfectly visible after only a glance, merely confirmed what Lestrade and the constable on the wharf had already told him. Anything else he may have learned – gait, stance, height, weight, general place of residence and regular local haunts – Holmes already knew.

The wooly cap came out next; there was blood on it that corresponded to the split in Cartright's left eyebrow. Holmes sniffed at the inner lining of the cap. Soap. The boy had found a favorable living situation, then – somewhere that allowed him to bathe regularly, to purchase and store soap. Holmes frowned at the short bristles of hair caught in the wool, plucked one out to look at, and then wondered why he had done so. Cartright had a full head of hair there on the morgue slab next to him, if he wished to examine it. The wool cap went on top of the shoes.

Next, trousers. Torn at the right knee, blood dried to black around the ragged edges. Discoloration from the knees down, likely gained while kneeling on the wall of the wharf. Thames water must have been puddled on the stones as Holmes could smell it tainting the fabric. He moved upward, checked the pockets even though he knew that the coroner, not to mention countless bobbies, would have already done so. Empty save for tiny bits of parchment that had likely rubbed from the edges of a scrap of paper, or a tobacco slip. Moving on. Cartright had soiled himself in his death throws. It was a perfectly natural occurrence – most people loosed their bowels at the end, especially if it were a violent one. Still, Holmes experienced an irrational wish that he could have somehow spared the boy the indignity. It was a pointless notion, and served nothing. Holmes set it aside with the trousers.

The shirt yielded brown-yellow stains acquired by immersion in water, no doubt sustained when reaching for the beggar's body. Holmes segregated the large, filth-ridden great coat which had once belonged to the beggar, and Lestrade found a new bin in which to store it. It bore out Holmes' theory as to the dumping of the beggar's body and its separation from its coat. A few farthings littered the pockets, and the silt stains appeared to match with those on the body they had viewed in situ this morning. The coroner would confirm that later, but Holmes was not in doubt. Any additional evidence had been ruined either by immersion in the Thames, or by the subsequent handling of the coat. For once, Holmes did not bother to lecture Lestrade on the handling of evidence; it could not be undone, and Holmes was too weary to bother raising his voice sufficient to a good dressing down.

Next came mittens with the fingertips cut off, covered in soot from a hearth fire. Braces that had been made from the pieces of two separate sets sewn together. A sweater with holes in the elbows, patched over with corduroy. Three pairs of thin summer socks, layered one over the other to keep out the chill of a London winter. Small clothes that had been well kept and often washed, but which now smelt of exertion and fear, also stained with blood and the byproducts of his death. Cartright's own coat, woolen and lined but light for being so threadbare. Holmes should have given him a new one; he had several that the boy would have accepted not as charity, but as a handing-down.

The non-clothing items found on the body lay scattered along the bottom of the bin. Holmes picked out the silver cigarette case, the same one that he had once left on a rock beside a waterfall to weight down the note he had written for Watson. He recognized the deep score across the back of it, gained in a knife fight while in pursuit of a fugitive. Holmes had not even been after the man with the knife; he had been trying to head off a fleeing suspect, had ducked into an alley, and a drunken man had pegged him for a good fight. The case had likely saved his life that night.

Holmes traced the scar marring the silver with his index finger, and then passed the case to Watson, who also knew it on sight. Watson made no sound other than to sigh, and opened the case to show Lestrade where the engraving could be observed beneath the lining.

"Bugger," Lestrade swore. "How in blazes did he get hold of this?"

"My guess would be the beggar," Holmes replied, distant. He watched himself sifting through the detritus cluttering the bottom of the bin. Buttons, bits of wood and stone, two cigarettes rolled poorly by young, inexperienced hands, a littering of tobacco chips, several handkerchiefs, and a bread knife with a leather wrapping bound about the handle to make a crude weapon of it.

"Guess?" Lestrade asked.

Holmes looked up, and something in his expression caused Lestrade to start and then fail to look away. "Yes. I have no facts, so a conjecture must do."

Lestrade shook his head, his forehead creasing into furrows. "But you never guess, Mister Holmes."

"Needs must, Inspector." Holmes picked up a slip of paper, the receipt from the cobbler, and stiffened. He sucked in a measured yet hasty breath and very carefully placed it back into the bin before moving away from the tray altogether. His heart had taken to a wild, unwarranted pounding and he arrested it through sheer force of will.

Behind him, Watson had obviously examined the receipt for himself, and Holmes heard him murmur, "Oh, Holmes."

Holmes wrung his hands as he felt his lips curl in revulsion and disdain. "It is immaterial, Watson. Boys need roots to call their own. In the absence of blood, they will latch onto anyone who shows an interest. It is basic instinct for a child to attach itself to a benefactor, to – to read more into a random kindness than is truly there. Children…a boy needs to belong to someone, is all. He will choose anyone convenient to him."

"What?" Lestrade demanded. "What is it?"

No doubt, Watson was showing him the sales slip, and the line where Cartight had given his name to the cobbler as Cartright Holmes.

"A childish fancy," Holmes asserted, forceful about it and yet unsteady somehow. "A game played out of – of desperation to fit in somewhere. It's pathetic."

Lestrade took a deep breath, and then said flatly, "It is not just some immature fancy, Mister Holmes. He did not choose just anyone to call himself after; he chose you."

"Yes, well," Holmes scoffed, rubbing his knuckles as if he could take the skin off and feel the better for it. "The more fool he."

An outraged exclamation was followed by an indrawn breath, preparatory to harsh, loud words, but Watson shushed Lestrade and said something too low for Holmes to catch. They both fell silent and Holmes took that moment of reprieve to wrest his face back into impassive lines. His stomach remained knotted, however, and he had never wanted his needle so badly as he did in this moment. Watson would call him an idiot and start listing out everything that was wrong with Holmes' use of cocaine, but if there were ever a time for clarity of thought, it was now. There were odd things swimming about in the attic of Holmes' mind, and none of them were relevant to the investigation. Cartright learning letters. Cartright stealing Wiggins' hat and making off with it like a hyena. Cartright with his arm broken from falling off crates at the dock, curled up asleep on a rug before the sitting room fire, the plaster of the cast glowing orange in the darkness. Holmes had stayed in his chair until dawn to make sure he had no urgent needs during the night, and Watson had laughed himself hoarse over it the next morning even as Cartright beamed at Holmes and called Watson a cad with all of the high-pitched indignation that a boy of ten could muster. Cocaine helped Holmes sort through the chaos; it galvanized his mind and made everything brilliant and clear as still waters. He needed focus. He needed to find the men who had dared to lay hands on this boy, and then he needed to murder them in cold blood. He could not do that in his current state.

A dozen deep breaths measured to a ten-count each served to calm a small portion of his mental clamour. Sedate again, at least on the surface, Holmes turned and came back to the autopsy table. Lestrade appeared angry and put off, but he made no comment as Holmes motioned him aside so that he could examine the body. Flinging back the sheet took little effort and he ignored it as it fluttered down to billow in thick folds over Cartright's feet. Holmes could feel two pairs of living eyes watching him, which he resolutely ignored. Lestrade's ire could be heard in the harsh, overly dramatic manner in which he huffed his breath. Watson's displeasure was a less tangible thing, and it irked Holmes to know that it was there. Of all people, Watson knew him best; surely he could not expect Holmes to change from his fundamental self simply on account of one unexpected murder. Holmes was not good at matters of common humanity; he was good at facts, at categorization and deduction. Abandoning his chief tools now would serve nothing, and Cartright would still be dead either way.

The postmortem discoloration and settling of blood had paled the skin of Cartright's chest to an unnatural, almost luminescent grey. Even the place where his ribs had been obviously broken bore little color to evidence the bleeding that had taken place internally. His form was that of a boy on the cusp of manhood, baby fat still holding out in unexpected places like soldiers clinging to a fortress under the final day of a siege, bound to fall and yet resolute in their tenacity to the very last. When Holmes had caught him dipping his grimy fingers into gentlemen's pockets on the Strand, Cartright had been a scrawny, starving, sharp-witted child of eight. He would have reached his sixteenth year in January. He hadn't even any hair on his chest yet.

Holmes picked up the boy's right hand and examined the stains on the fingertips, the state of the cuticles, and the grime beneath the nails. He used a pick to dig some of it out and smeared it between his fingers to release the scent. Unremarkable – the same silt, most likely, that covered the beggar's coat. Next, Holmes tasted it for chemical residue, and again, he detected nothing of consequence. The body had lain here too long, been pawed over by the coroner too many times. He smelled and tasted only antiseptic and the starched soap from the sheet covering him. The body had been washed down after autopsy. Standard procedure.

"No use," Holmes growled, laying the hand back down. "There are no traces left."

"I have the coroner's report here," Lestrade told him, offering a plain brown folder.

"Pah. I have yet to meet a coroner with any true notion of what to look for at autopsy. Watson?" Holmes waved at Watson to take the report instead. While Watson studied the cramped penmanship giving an account of the cause of death and the circumstances leading to it, Holmes looked at Cartright's still face. At some point, his fingers had come to hover near the boy's disordered hair and he smoothed it down without quite meaning to touch it. It was an awkward action, foreign to his hands. He recognized it as patterned on the way that Watson occasionally touched Holmes himself to calm him, or to convey an unspoken emotional message, many of which Holmes failed to identify beyond the general offer of some kind of support or affection. When Watson did such things, it seemed to sooth him as much as Holmes. Holmes felt nothing, doing it to Cartright now. Perhaps he was doing it incorrectly. He pressed his mouth into a grimace and withdrew his hand with a sniff.

Watson stopped speaking abruptly and it was only then, with the break of silence, that Holmes realized there had been words at all. He drew back from the body and looked up. "Go on, Watson."

"Yes, of course." But Watson's gaze lingered for a few more seconds on Holmes, startled enough that it showed on his face and disrupted the even line of his mouth. He shook himself a moment later as if he had just noticed himself staring, and his eyes dropped like leaded weights to the page before him. "I was just listing the injuries. It's nothing that will help us, Holmes; nothing unusual. He put up an impressive fight, but…" Evidently, he could not bring himself to state the obvious, which was that Cartright had been quite brutally beaten before he succumbed. Watson cleared his throat and gently shut the folder. "I'm sorry, Holmes."

"Yes. Well." Holmes peered downward again and Cartright's face blurred out of focus with the relaxation of Holmes' pupils. His eyes burned from fatigue; he had spent several days in lassitude, but none of it had been restful. That was not a property of a cocaine-induced fugue. "I wish to speak to the flower girl who reported the argument between Mister Cartright and the beggar. This is the same girl who also witnessed my own assault?"

Lestrade nodded from off in the corner of Holmes' eye. "Not the beginning, but she saw you come out of the alley after Redding's trio left."

"Hm." Holmes narrowed his eyes touched two fingers to his bottom lip. "You have an address where she may be found?"

"Not…as such," Lestrade stammered. There was no call for such a show of nerves; Holmes was quite calm. They were all of them, quite calm here. "We know the streets she frequents. She's not really what you might call 'tied down'. A strange one, she is. Not quite right in the head."

"The boundaries of her territory, then. And you may wish to look for her yourself, perhaps to remove her to a safer location. If these murders are evidence of a conspiracy, then it would be logical to assume that she may be a target." Holmes drew the sheet up and tucked it beneath Cartright's chin. For some reason, it seemed imperative that he say something, and he found himself murmuring, quite beyond his own cognizance, "There's a good lad," as he patted Cartright's chest through the sheet.

A few seconds later, Watson queried with the utmost neutrality, "Holmes?"

Holmes looked up and smiled, but he could feel it go queer and falter. "Yes, Watson."

Watson turned his face a fraction away, but his eyes remained locked to Holmes' until he was peering sidelong at him. "Don't get lost in there, old man."

"No, of course not." He made the approximate smile again, and through it, confessed, "I am not certain I feel quite well. Perhaps fatigue has caught up with me."

Watson nodded several times, sharp movements highlighted by the lift of his eyebrows, his expression one of dubious incredulity. "I can see that. How about we get you home now. You've been…ill these past few days. No doubt this morning has quite worn your nerves down."

"Yes, that sounds marvelous." Holmes slanted his gaze off to the side and then down again, to Cartright. The smile, mostly sick as it had been, evaporated altogether. He had never explained to Watson that he had only remained in that chair all night because Cartright had feared the shadows with all the vehemence of a child who had never truly felt safe. "He could never abide being alone in the dark." A persistent itch seemed to dance and flicker against his cheek like cobwebs, and Holmes impatiently scratched at it. A moment later, he subsided in favor of frowning down at the tips of his fingers, which had come away slick with wet.

It was Lestrade then, not Watson, who grasped him by the shoulder and turned him away, pressing his scarf into his hands. "Don't you worry about him, Mister Holmes. There's nothing left that can hurt him now. Go on and let Doctor Watson look after you." He gave Holmes a light shove between the shoulder blades to get him moving.

"Come now, Holmes." Watson took the scarf from Holmes' nerveless fingers and tied it about his neck. The he pulled Holmes' arm through his own and tucked it against his body. "Put your hat on."

It was only after Watson had hailed a cab and somehow maneuvered Holmes into it that Holmes had the presence of mind to snap, "It is _not _immaterial." He said it as if getting in the last word of a heated argument.

Watson looked sharply at him as he sank down to the seat. The hansom lurched into motion and he looked away just as quickly, settling back a bit to consider Holmes' words. Finally, he murmured, his voice scratched the way worn phonographs played crackling old copies of concertos, "I know." Watson reached over and squeezed Holmes' hand, a brief flash of warmth in the gathering dusk. "I _do_ know."

Holmes jerked his head down in a brusque nod. "Good."

* * *

Despite the bumpy ride and the chill of the open cab, Holmes nodded off not two blocks from Scotland Yard, slumped into his corner of the compartment with his chin drooping down to rest on his collarbone. Watson watched him openly for once, staring at the gentle curve of an ear partially obscured by a feathering of unkempt hair mashed down beneath the brim of his hat, long overdue for a cutting. Holmes' face was tucked in against his own shoulder, buried in the upturned collar of his greatcoat. He seemed small. Not diminished, but…less, somehow. Or perhaps it was simply how tired he looked, nodding-off aside. Or how much older than he had been a year ago, standing with his arms held wide in Watson's consulting room, smiling and vibrant and miraculously alive.

Watson shook him awake as they came to a halt in front of 221 Baker Street, and Holmes took a groggy look about as Watson climbed down from the hansom. Out of habit, Watson held the folding door, and then had to call to an unmoving Holmes, "The fare, old cock. You've my checkbook, remember? And I haven't any spare change on me today."

Holmes blinked, shivered a bit, and then dug about his pockets until he came up with a few coins, which he passed through the roof hatch to the driver. Then he lit from the cab with very little of his customary grace, and Watson linked their arms together without a word. It had started to snow again, and the cold made Watson's various old injuries throb in time with the pulse of the gusting wind. There were days when he swore that he could actually feel the bits of shrapnel and bullet fragments still embedded deep in his muscles, grinding away against his bones with every flex of his limbs. The sensation was like fingernails to a chalkboard, for all that it was not an audible one.

Mrs Hudson fussed at them as soon as they crossed the threshold, demanding that wet shoes come off and walking sticks get handed over. She fell quiet a moment later, her head tilted to one side as she studied Holmes, who had neither made eye contact nor uttered a word of greeting. Rather than inquiring as to what had happened to send their moods so far afield, she merely asked Watson, "Shall I bring tea?"

"Yes, that would be lovely, Mrs Hudson." Watson smiled as he handed over his hat, then caught at Holmes before he had quite made it to the first stair and gentled him out of his great coat. Holmes allowed this, and relinquished his scarf as well before inclining his head in Mrs Hudson's direction and retreating upstairs in silence, his footfalls muffled on the stairs, save for the one board that creaked.

Mrs Hudson, their outdoor things gathered in a grey and black bundle in her arms, gave Watson a concerned look. "I've a bottle of claret airing in the kitchen, if you think it would do him some good. The grouse is not yet done, though I have some biscuits I could send up with the tea."

"You are a treasure, Mrs Hudson. Biscuits would be lovely." Watson attempted to offer her a warm smile, but he could feel where it petered out midway from his mouth to his eyes. "I am afraid that…well. You remember our fine Mister Cartright?"

Mrs Hudson's lip disappeared between her teeth and she nodded in a knowing fashion. "The lad's dead, isn't he."

Watson began to say something soothing, but he stopped himself at the last moment. "How…has a rumor made its way here, then?"

"No, nothing like that, Doctor. I've just not seen him in days, and the boy is practically a fixture out there." Mrs Hudson lifted her chin to peer up the stairs, toward the empty landing Holmes had just traversed and disappeared from. "Men wear their grief like shields, you know. He loved that boy." She dropped her eyes from the staircase and fixed them sternly on Watson. "Don't let him alone, Doctor. I would feel more secure knowing you were keeping an eye on him tonight."

"I assure you, I have no other intentions this evening."

Mrs Hudson nodded, shifting the garments in her arms. "I'll prepare your tea, then." She began to turn away, hesitated, and then glanced back with her body half angled in the other direction. "If you or Mister Holmes have any needs tonight, I hope you won't hesitate to ask, no matter the hour."

Watson gave a solemn nod, sucking his lips between his teeth as he did so. "Thank you. I should go tend to Holmes. He has not quite recovered from his illness this morning, and the combination of stresses…" He trailed off at the look he received for his lie of civility. Of course, she knew as well as Watson did that Holmes had not been ill, per se, for the past three days.

Her voice stern as befitted a strong woman of her years, Mrs Hudson informed him, "I removed those things from my house while you were out. Every single one of them that I could find, which I suspect is more than you were aware of yourself. He doesn't need it, not the way he uses it. It's not healthy, and I'll not have him poisoning himself under my roof, not anymore. You tell him that from me." Without waiting for an acknowledgement, or even for an argument, Mrs Hudson whirled away in a flurry of skirts, coats, hats and scarves.

Watson stared blankly after her, then coughed and turned to mount the stairs in Holmes' wake. He really ought to stop underestimating Mrs Hudson; she was a formidable woman, despite her age and the smallness of her stature. And she was one of very few people who could get away with doing such a thing. Anyone else, Holmes would tear apart with his words and then openly thwart with as much malicious intent as he could mange. Mrs Hudson would earn a tantrum and a bit of yelling, but Holmes would never dare defy her, not concerning the activities that she would or would not permit in her house. And even the tantrum would be smoothed over a few days or weeks later, via the convenient medium of flowers or a new hat and gloves left surreptitiously in front of her sitting room door. Holmes may have had many distasteful moods and eccentricities, but he was always a gentleman. Eventually.

The sitting room was empty when Watson stepped inside, but there was evidence of Holmes' progress across the room in the form of his shoes lying several feet apart in the middle of the floor, no doubt toed off as he walked, and in the disarray of the mantle, which Watson had straightened just this morning. There was tobacco strewn all over the hearth, the Persian slipper was empty, and an old black clay pipe was missing from Holmes' rack.

Watson sighed and at least picked up the shoes so that neither of them would trip over them. "Holmes, if you're of a mind to waste tobacco, at least warn me so that I can make sure to hide my own." No answer was forthcoming, so Watson made his way to the open door to Holmes' faint trail of pipe smoke wafting past doorway gave him away.

Inside, Holmes stood glaring at his shaving table, nearly every one of his inhalations coming through the stem of the pipe clamped tight between his lips. His things had clearly been pawed through, and Mrs Hudson, occasionally vindictive lady that she was, had left the empty morocco case sitting out in plain sight where Holmes could not but see it immediately. A row of empty test tubes, scrubbed clean with their stoppers lined up beneath them, accompanied the absent needle. There were seven of them. It was a very clear message, and Watson wondered how many broken teacups and appropriated soup spoons she would suffer for having the gall to deliver it.

"Holmes? Tell me what you need, old boy."

To Watson's surprise, Holmes startled at the sound of his voice and nearly dropped his pipe. "Watson," he gusted, eyes wide, and then he frowned, his gaze refocusing over Watson's shoulder. He seemed to pale, but it could have been a trick of the light; Holmes had little color in his face to begin with.

Puzzled, Watson craned his neck past his own shoulder and followed Holmes' gaze to the collection of portraits decorating the bedroom wall. Macabre pieces, all of them – serial killers and other infamous criminals. When Watson had first taken rooms here, he had been appalled by the sight of this display; it had seemed to him at first glance that Holmes glorified these criminals the way other men did when they kept portraits of ancestors and war heroes. In fact, he was still not entirely certain that this wasn't the case. Watson was only immune to the sight now because he rarely looked at that wall. He suppressed the urge to either grimace or shiver, and merely remarked, "I think I liked Palmer better in the corner, where I could barely see him."

An odd sound drew Watson's attention back to Holmes, who had left off staring at the wall and was now fixated on Watson with a most disconcerting expression. "What?"

"William Palmer," Watson repeated more sharply than he had intended, waving his hand toward the portrait in question. "Serial poisoner? I have always found him more disturbing to look at than the others, but as he was mostly obscured in the shadow of the wardrobe, I hardly noticed him. You've switched him with the Mannings."

Holmes just…stared at him, and for a very long moment. Then he shifted his gaze to the portraits again, and Watson imagined that he could feel a knot of pressurized air lift from him and move to hover above the dresser.

"Holmes?"

"I have not rearranged the portraits," Holmes stated, his voice clipped. "I am aware of your dislike for Palmer's face; that is why he was relegated to the corner in the first place."

Watson frowned, then passed a hand across his eyes and shook his head. "Mrs Hudson must have moved them, then. Or the maid."

"Mrs Hudson would not dare!" Holmes snapped.

Watson shut his eyes briefly, one hand raised in the hopes of warding off further outbursts. The weariness he felt in dealing with Holmes' mood startled him with its intensity, but then again, it had been a very trying day for both of them. "It was likely an accident, then. Perhaps they were knocked off the wall and she replaced them in the wrong configuration. I am certain that it was not malicious."

With a snort, Holmes shoved past him and snatched the Mannings' portrait from the wall, followed by the one of Palmer. Both were subjected to a fierce scrutiny. "Neither frame shows evidence of having fallen – there are no scratches, no dents, no broken or scored glass. And how would they have been knocked aside in the first place, I ask you? This side of the room has not been tidied, and the only reason to touch portraits anyway would be to dust them – " He broke off with a heavy frown, angling the frames so that he could peer along the surface of the glass of each. Then he turned to regard the rest of his gruesome collection, arrayed across the wall in front of them. "There is dust on all of those, a thick layer, undisturbed." He held up the two frames in his hands. "And these have been wiped clean."

Watson blinked, nonplussed, and then said, "Surely you are not suggesting that someone broke into our rooms for the sole purpose of rearranging your wall pictures."

A tiny furrow appeared on Holmes brow, and he ducked his head to look again at the frames in his hands. A formless worry worked its way onto Holmes' features, faint but unmistakable, and then he straightened with a scowl. "Of course not. Don't be absurd." He flung the portraits on top of the rest of the clutter littering the surface of his dresser, and then stormed out into the sitting room.

Watson bit his lip, staring at the discarded portraits, and then he took a deep breath and followed after Holmes. "We need to have a discussion," he announced.

Holmes paused in his pacing and plucked the pipe from between his lips. "About what, pray tell?"

He did not want to say this. Truly, Watson would have preferred to simply ignore the whole thing and carry on.

On the other side of the room, Holmes shifted to stand languidly with one hip cocked and the hand not holding his pipe stuffed into his pocket. This was not an easy stance; it was the one Holmes adopted when suspicious of those in his company. He was a predator like this, more so than any of the men on his bedroom wall could have ever hoped to be. None of that was apparent in his tone, however, when he encouraged, "Go on, my dear Watson. I assure you, it will be better to have it out in the open now."

It occurred to Watson that Holmes expected him to confess to moving the portraits. Why on earth Holmes would think that of him was beyond Watson. Watson sighed, shaking his head in surrender without meaning to give Holmes that impression. "I think that we need to talk about the invisible men."

Stillness such as that which followed this pronouncement should be lethal for the sharpness of its edges. And then Holmes took a shaking step in his direction, livid just to look at, and hissed, "_What do you know of them?_"

Watson swallowed an unexpected knot of apprehension. It was unwise to confront a volatile man, especially considering that Holmes had become violent with him once before over this business. "Mycroft told me about your mother's…condition. About the death of your father. You…said some things to him when he collected you from Lestrade's office. He was understandably concerned about you."

Neither of them moved or reacted right away, and yet the distance between them – the mere width of the sitting room – seemed to grow as Holmes digested and then analyzed this new information. Holmes eventually broke eye contact and stepped back, withdrawing into the folding of his shoulders and the casting aside of his posture. There was no anger there, no betrayal, no sense of anything at all. "Get out," he said. The flat, unadorned quality of his voice, the casual steadiness, belied the rest of his affect, which was slamming shut right there in Watson's face as Holmes turned his back and ran the stem of his pipe over his bottom lip. "Now."

"Holmes – "

"He told you this in the Stranger's Room," Holmes stated, but the deduction came in a deadened manner, as if it were nearly beyond Holmes to care about it anymore. "That is why you wanted the membership roles for the club. You knew that he had been there, didn't you." It was not a question.

Watson opened his mouth but found no words. His feet brought him a step forward, however. "No, I did not know," he denied. "Not for certain." And of course Holmes knew what he and Mycroft had argued about; the man could read lips with the same ease as ciphers. "I knew that something had happened, that _some_one had been there – "

"He told me that he was an invisible man," Holmes interrupted, his voice still frightening in its softness, its calm.

Watson nodded. "So you implied at the time."

"I could not imagine how anyone could know about them, so I took the whole thing for an hallucination. And you let me."

Watson swallowed, but there was tightness in his throat and chest that should not have been there, and it would not depart. "He must have eavesdropped on our conversation. The door was closed, but we hardly took precautions other than that." Again, Watson moved to swallow, but his adam's apple got in the way this time and prevented it. "Holmes, will you look at me?"

A mirthless huff sounded from behind the pipe stem and Holmes lowered his head over it. Smoke puffed up around his head a moment later. He ignored Watson's plea. "Tell me, Doctor. Just now, when you brought this up, were you about to accuse me of paranoia? Tell me that like my mother, I was seeing evidence of trespass that was not there?"

He was tempted to lie – it may even have been the right thing to do – but he had promised not four days ago to never do so to Holmes again. "It had crossed my mind. The alternative is…fantastic." That someone had orchestrated this – was doing this intentionally to make Holmes appear a madman, or to think himself one.

"Is it?" Holmes mused. "Hm. I suppose it must be."

Watson ventured another step closer, but he was still well beyond arm's reach. "Will you tell me what happened in that room? What he said to you, what…what he did?"

"Why?" Holmes shrugged, and Watson wished that he could see Holmes' face. "It hardly matters. The motive matters, the goal. Everything else is a distraction."

Watson felt compelled to add, "If it was real."

Holmes chuckled, and it was truly an ugly sound. "Yes, indeed, Watson. Good form."

Watson dropped his eyes, sick at himself for his own honesty. Finally, all he could really do was aver, "I want to believe you, Holmes. I swear to god, I do."

"But you are a medical man," Holmes replied. "And I have always been slightly mad. One cannot ignore precedents."

"That is not what I meant."

Holmes responded with a disinterested grunt and arranged himself in the frame of the window overlooking Baker Street. "I believe I asked you to leave."

Watson shook his head. "No. I am not leaving you alone in here, Holmes. If he has been here, if he has found his way into our home – "

"Stop being tedious. You may as well go. As you said, the alternative is fantastic."

"That does not mean it's untrue. Look at the cases we have worked, Holmes. Many of those were fantastic too." Watson felt his brow creasing, his mouth twisting his mustache into an unnatural shape. "You don't seriously mean to say that you actually believe – "

"Even I cannot argue with fact," Holmes interjected, and finally, there was a hint of feeling to his voice – a touch of anger. "I am bombarded by facts, Watson. Tell me, how else are they to be read?"

Watson bristled, a sensation that he felt acutely all over his body. His hands balled into fists, he strode to the sitting room door and bellowed for Mrs Hudson in a manner normally reserved for Holmes. She appeared at the landing, with a tea tray, muttering under her breath and glaring at him for his impatience. Watson stepped aside to allow her entrance to the sitting room, then blocked the way out after she deposited the tea tray on the sideboard. "Mrs Hudson, did you touch any of the portraits on Holmes' bedroom walls?"

Mrs Hudson drew herself up, indignant. "I told you what I touched," she snapped back.

"Yes or no, Mrs Hudson," Watson pressed. He should have felt a cad for bullying a woman in such a manner, and yet he only felt desperate. "Did you move his portraits?"

"I don't even look at the ghastly things," Mrs Hudson told him. "And unless you want your supper served to you black and crisped, I suggest you to step aside."

Watson stood his ground; this was more important that the state of his dinner. "Did the maid enter these rooms at all?"

"Certainly not! Do you think that I would subject any poor girl to the – the _state_ that you two leave this place in? And before you ask, no, there were no callers today, and no guests in the house." She flapped her hand at him and Watson automatically sidestepped, watching her retreat in a fluster of raised hackles and dark looks. "Honestly!" she muttered from halfway down the stairs. "The nerve."

Watson closed the door, overly gentle, and released the doorknob only after long deliberation. Someone had rearranged the portraits, and it had not been one of the four people who were supposed to be in this house. Someone had been here, unseen, just as someone had been in the room at the Diogenes Club. A witness was dead, as was the young man who had tried to save him. It hardly mattered if these events had been perpetrated by a fourth assailant from the original assault, or by some other man for some other purpose. It only mattered that in this house, in this room, they were not safe. Holmes was not safe.

Watson looked up to find Holmes watching him, expressionless. After inhaling more shallowly than he liked, Watson said, "Tell me what happened at the Diogenes Club."

It took nearly a minute of them regarding each other with ambiguous expressions from opposite sides of the room. And then finally, Holmes sagged against the window frame, his hand falling nerveless to his side with the pipe dangling between his fingers. Ash fell in a thin billowing line to the carpet and smoldered for a moment before going dark. "All right."

* * *

_He only frightened him. _

Watson folded his jacket and placed it in the wardrobe, fairly chanting that inside his head. _It's alright; he only frightened him; nothing more... _Behind him, Holmes already sat propped against the headboard, a tea saucer in his lap for an ashtray. They were in Watson's room on the second floor, the window secured and braced shut with the aid of two canes, and the door locked with a chair shoved beneath the handle. It was very probable that the two of them would suffocate of smoke inhalation long before dawn, judging by the rate at which Holmes was fouling the air, and yet Watson did not even contemplate opening the window.

The incident at the club had not been as bad as Watson had feared. The man had touched Holmes indecently, but had not progressed beyond fondling through clothes; Holmes had passed out too quickly for that, though he could not tell Watson for certain whether he had stopped breathing due to fear, or because the man had actively cut off his air to render him insensible. He had still been under the influence of brandy and chloral, probably administered to excess, in Watson's opinion, by a physician with too heavy a hand for these things. In any case, Holmes admitted to the addling of his senses, and while Watson was now convinced of some larger conspiracy, Holmes himself…was not. He would not let go of the possibility that the majority of the event had been a drug-induced illusion or a waking hallucination. It was unsettling, and Watson found himself in desperate need of something or someone to hate for this state of affairs.

Watson set about unbuttoning his cuffs, and then his shirt, his eyes trained on the work of his fingers. "Alright. We will be taking certain precautions starting tonight, and I am telling you now that they are not negotiable."

The bed frame creaked as Holmes shifted. "Has it occurred to you, Watson, that you may be taking things a bit far?"

Watson slammed his open palm into the surface of his dresser, upsetting a bottle of cologne and causing the cufflinks in the dish beside it to dance. "He was in our home - for god's sake, Holmes, he was in your _bedroom_! There is no possible way for me to take this too far!" His other hand came to rest on the dresser as well, bracing him upright as he fought to control his breathing, but he was not certain that it would be enough. "Holmes, you don't…understand, you… He _touched_ you – he was _right there_, and I wasn't…and I…you are supposed to be safe, I am supposed to see to that, and I cannot let him near you again. Holmes, I can't risk it."

Just as his knees began to buckle and a shameful, frantic bubble burst in his chest, Watson heard Holmes moving about behind him. A hurried pattering of bare feet punctuated the smoke-filled air, and then Holmes grasped him about the chest to keep him on his feet. "Easy, now, Watson. Just breathe for a moment."

Watson leaned back against Holmes, grateful for the support, and dug his fingernails into the smooth wood beneath his hands. He knew this feeling, but it had been over a decade since he last felt it. Wild reaction and panic and dwindling control, but instead of the deafening roar of gunfire and the screams of dying men, Watson heard Holmes telling him about rent money and the ruined shirt and how he hadn't understood what they meant to do to him.

Holmes murmured nonsense in his ear, the same sorts of things he had whispered all of those years ago when he first noticed that Watson occasionally suffered from nervous spells brought on by his service during the war. It wasn't helping, though; Holmes' gentle voice was not making its way intact to Watson. There were unnatural gaps between words where the reassurances faded out, and the sentences slithered and changed as they reached Watson's ears. _I couldn't let you find my body_. And, _There were forty two buttons; I marked it._ But not Fourth Man's buttons. Maybe he just hadn't had any buttons. Not everyone's clothes had buttons.

"You will work yourself into a state," Holmes cautioned. "Do try to calm yourself, Watson. Shall I fetch you a brandy? You must tell me what you need. I cannot help if I don't know what you need of me."

"I told you," Watson gasped, choking on his own bile and rage. "It's just like a war. It's a warzone. Everywhere. And you're not safe. I have to keep you safe, I _have to_!" He shouted this last, and Holmes' grip tightened about his ribs, hands splayed over Watson's sternum and diaphragm.

"I know," Holmes murmured. "I know, John."

Watson shook, his own feet threatening to skitter out from under him as he twisted, pushing away from the dresser with his arms to increase the force of their bodies pressing together, to make Holmes seem more solid against him. "You _don't_ know!" he countered, and there was such fury in him that he felt certain his heart would burst with it. "You weren't here – you have no _fucking_ idea what it was like to lose you!"

Holmes ticked in response, and then he whispered, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'll do whatever you want – any precautions – I swear, just please stop this."

Watson tipped his head back, trying to loosen the knot in his chest so that he could breathe. Behind him, Holmes reset his weight so that they didn't fall, and Watson finally – finally, after a year of ignoring this thing lying between them, of pretending that everything was fine, that Reichenbach was just another stunt, that he wasn't terrified of losing this all over again – finally, Watson got his feet steady, turned around, and punched Holmes in the face. Then he grabbed him like a lifeline before Holmes could so much as stagger from the blow, and refused to let him go.

Watson hadn't cried before. He hadn't grieved, no matter what Holmes thought. The stories he had published over the course of those three years had not been a eulogy. In fact, Watson had not dealt with Reichenbach at all. He had shoved it into a little box in his mind and built walls around it, sentries posted at every access point, and he had left it there, undisturbed. And he had scribbled out his stories to relive them because as long as there were still more stories to write, there was no ending to speak of. Holmes had come back to him before all of the stories had run out, yes, but that earlier pain had not dissipated. He had believed his dearest friend dead for three years, and the need to mourn that was not going to go away simply because Holmes was miraculously alive again.

"It could have been you," Watson gurgled. He did not recall either of them sliding to the floor, but they had, and Holmes was trying to wrap himself around Watson as if to better hold his pieces together. "He could have killed you instead of Cartright." It was a horrid thing to say, and yet he did not regret saying it. It could have been Holmes in that morgue today, dead by any one of a hundred means. It could have been Holmes dead on the floor of his own bedroom, blood saturated with an excess of cocaine. Dead in any one of those thousands of moments when Watson was not beside him, was not with him, could not save him.

Holmes said nothing, his hand going still where it had been rubbing circles into Watson's back. He resumed a moment later, tucking his nose in against Watson's ear. "I know," he breathed. It seemed the only possible response – just an acknowledgement that what Watson said was true. "Please stop. I've promised to do whatever you like. Please, Watson."

"I can't go through that again," Watson told him. "I need you here with me, Holmes, I need you here safe, I _need _you."

"That's enough," Holmes soothed, awkward in his attempt to comfort. "Look here, now, Watson – I'm fine. And you're fine. And there's no cause for this, so stop it now." His words were harsh, but the tone was not. And contrary to his admonitions, Holmes gathered Watson closer and began to rock them both back and forth. Maybe it was natural, and maybe he was just emulating what he had seen others do. It didn't matter which. Watson sank into him and buried himself in the collar of Holmes' dressing gown, fully aware of the indecent sight they made tangled together on the floor, one of them in his nightclothes and the other half undressed.

Watson breathed in tatters and wet coughs, clinging like a limpet until he heard himself saying, over and over, "You can't die again, you can't, I won't let you…" and made himself stop.

Holmes had fallen silent by now, still rocking, though more gently. When Watson risked opening his eyes to get a look at just how much of a mess he had made of them both, he found Holmes staring forward with a pensive, troubled pall to his features. Eventually, his eyelids flickered and he noticed Watson's regard. He didn't say anything though, and he didn't smile or soften his features or try to smooth any of this over. He merely looked at Watson for a little while, and then he looked away at something else again.

They remained there until Watson's breathing returned to normal, and then helped each other up without a word. Holmes resumed his place propped against the headboard and lit a fresh cigarette, and Watson finished dressing for bed. The silence was awkward, but not due to embarrassment, at least not on Watson's end. He was not entirely certain what had just happened, or what sorts of consequences there would be for it. It seemed to have affected Holmes on some level normally unattained by emotional displays, and though their gazes did not meet, Watson was aware of Holmes casting him wary, appraising looks as Watson bustled about the room completing his nightly routine.

Before he blew out the candle on his table, Watson offered Holmes a cold, damp towel for the knuckle-shaped bruise blossoming on his right cheekbone. Then Watson sat on the edge of the mattress to kick off his slippers. He remained there afterwards with his bare toes furling into the little rug beneath his feet. There were malformed sentiments swimming about the back of his mind, and he knew that they would not quiet until he had them out.

Behind him, Holmes stubbed out his cigarette and set the saucer on the nightstand. "Watson? I believe I owe you an apology, though I am not quite certain what I have done to so upset you."

Watson ignored him, just existing there with him for a short time. Then he said, his voice threaded through like that of a consumptive breathing through the fluid filling his own lungs, "Whether he is real or not, I will not let him have you." The unsteady nature of his words seemed to lend them a gravity and a force that a calmer, more measured delivery could not have accomplished. "Do you understand, Holmes? He'll not have you, and that's the end of it."

Long fingers curled over the tip of Watson's shoulder and tugged him back to lie down in the narrow bed. The candle went out and darkness settled around them. "Go to sleep now, dear fellow. We can talk about your precautions in the morning."

Watson caught at the hand on his shoulder before it could slip away, and pulled. When Watson finally fell asleep, it was to the stale tang of tobacco smoke hovering still in the air, and to Sherlock Holmes curled around him like a blanket – a warm, living presence at his back.

~TBC~


	13. Chapter 13

It was nothing specific that woke Watson. A vague feeling pervaded the amorphous dream he'd been having – something about Murray, his loyal orderly from Afghanistan, and the arrangement of crumpets in a straight line down the center of the tiger skin rug, which had contained an exposed spinal column in the dream, fur pelt skinned back with medical clamps to reveal blood, muscles, tendons and pearled bone. Holmes had also been there, sitting by the tiger's head, sorting buttons into boxes labeled with various people's names. One of the boxes had remained conspicuously empty beside Watson's loaded and cocked revolver.

Watson shifted to find a more comfortable position and registered the dull, fading ache of his old war wound. He must have contorted his shoulder in his sleep, but he had apparently already rearranged himself before waking because the brief flare of pain that his movements engendered subsided rapidly once he stilled again.

"What were you dreaming of?"

In the darkness, Holmes was merely another shadow. Watson peered in the direction of his voice and eventually managed to make out the shape of his bowed back. It was only the sound of his voice which let Watson know that Holmes was faced away from him, seated erect on the edge of the bed with one shoulder propped against the headboard. Watson blinked in an effort to dispel the darkness, but it proved impossible. "What?"

Holmes shifted slightly, a well of ink moving against an old, dried bloodstain. "You sounded distressed for a moment in your breathing. Were you dreaming of the war?"

"No. Not really." Watson grunted with the effort of struggling upright, scooting back to lean against the headboard as well. He reached to his left without thinking and ran a hand down Holmes' spine, counting the sharp protrusions of vertebrae that appeared beneath his fingers. Holmes stiffened at the touch, but only a little, and it seemed merely habit at that, so Watson left his hand resting near the nape of Holmes' neck. "Did I wake you?"

Muscles moved beneath Watson's hand, the sleep-warmed fabric of Holmes' nightshirt pulling taut as he shrugged. "I was resting poorly; think nothing of it." The heretofore unnoticed scent of freshly burnt tobacco finally reached Watson's nostrils, followed by the soft crackling of cigarette paper as Holmes took a deep drag from the lit fag pinched in the fingers of his right hand. The glow was enough to illuminate little more than the sharp tip of Holmes' nose. His exhalations curled through the still air, the chromatic opposite of ink drops bleeding in weightless swirls through still water.

Watson rested his temple against the wood of the headboard. Not entirely certain of where the notion originated or why it seemed so important now, he said, "I know that you are not entirely alright, but… Would you tell me if you were contemplating some…some rash action?"

Holmes swallowed, an audible punctuation in the darkness. "I don't know what you mean."

"Yes," Watson countered, his voice devoid of either recrimination or sadness. "Yes, you do."

A quiet breath betrayed Holmes' effort not to sigh. "I'm not sure. I would like to think so." The mattress creaked and Watson felt the subtle pull of the top sheet evidencing Holmes' movement. "Would you? Tell me, I mean. If it were you."

Watson sucked his lips in between his teeth and swallowed the thickness in his throat. He looked away even though his eyes could make out little in the darkness. "No," he admitted. "Probably not. It's not something a fellow talks about, you know."

"Is that why you never spoke of it when you first took digs here?"

Breathless silence passed between them, but it lasted only a moment. "What?"

"You thought I didn't notice how you would retreat up here and take out your service revolver. You used to handle it the way I handle a syringe."

"And how, exactly, is that?"

"As if it could save you from the plague of your own mind."

Watson worked his tongue in silence behind closed lips and took care not to let his respirations betray him as Holmes drew on the cigarette beside him. Though his eyes remained dry from sleep, Watson blinked several times and trained his unseeing gaze in the direction of the blockaded window.

"I could see it," Holmes continued, his voice an incidental murmur weaving about the unfurling curls of the smoke he exhaled. "I remember feeling a sort of panic every night when you retired to bed. From the onset of our association, you were…kind to me. You tolerated my erratic behaviors, you even willingly carried on conversations with me. I wanted to keep you for that alone. No one had ever behaved like that to me before. You…valued me, my thoughts, my opinions. You actively courted my friendship. I couldn't understand why you did it, but it was…. It felt good. And I was terrified that you would take it back. I dragged you to that first crime scene out of desperation; I couldn't think of how else to keep you distracted from whatever was going on in your mind. I myself knew that feeling too well to abide leaving you alone with it. I knew the sort of havoc it could wreak, and I didn't want that for you. You were...better. You deserved better."

Watson smiled even though he knew that neither of them could see it. "It worked; I never thought of my revolver that way again." The mirth slipped from his face, gently but with an almost audible sense of gravitas. "Do you know, I really think you saved my life by it. Working cases with you, it was like being a character in my own adventure novel. It was so far removed from real life that I could hardly imagine the kind of man I had been before."

"Is that why you write us into stories? Because you see our lives as sensational fictions?"

"Maybe at first. I don't know. Sometimes, I just wanted other people to be as impressed by you as I was."

"But that went away," Holmes replied, his voice hushed and careful, muffled like a shrouded bell. "You were sick of me by the time you met Mary."

Watson fidgeted with the edge of the blanket. "It wasn't your fault." He knew how inadequate that was as an explanation, but it was the only one he had. He didn't know what had happened to sour his regard. Perhaps Watson had simply realized that no matter how amazing Holmes was, he was just as human and flawed as anyone else. Holmes was no hero, no philanthropist. When he solved crimes, it was for the thrill of the puzzle only, to satisfy himself and to hell with anyone else caught in the folds. Or so it had seemed to Watson at one point. He couldn't tell anymore if that were true or not; he only recalled feeling disgust at Holmes' coldness, his disregard for the humanity caught in his orbit. His occasional cruelty, his silence, the drugs that he turned to even though Watson sat right there before him and cared that he was destroying whatever might remain of his essential self. Watson _could _recall feeling disillusionment at the imperfect man. In fact, he could very clearly remember coming downstairs from his room on one particular morning, dust motes glittering in a shaft of sunlight pierced through the crack of the window blind to strike Holmes' slipper, and the so-called Great Detective insensate in his chair with his Morocco case in his lap and the tourniquet still tied about his arm, cutting off the circulation to his fingers to the point that they had been swollen and turning blue. And Watson had thought to himself quite forcefully on that morning: how dare _that_ man be the one to save Watson from himself?

"I haven't changed, Watson."

Watson looked up, blinking into the nothingness in front of him where he knew Holmes to be. "I know. But I like to think that maybe I have."

"That is what people tell themselves when they cannot face the truth of their own natures." It was a harsh statement, but Holmes stated in plainly rather than with rancor. "You haven't changed any more than I have."

"You cannot know that, Holmes. I am not going to abandon you. Even if by some miracle I find another woman willing to be the wife of a lowly part time doctor, I won't make that mistake again."

For a moment, no answer seemed forthcoming, and then Holmes mumbled, "You promised no more lies."

The tight flare of pain in his chest came suddenly, and Watson had to spend several exaggerated paces of his heartbeat trying to find a way to refute Holmes' well-placed mistrust. "That man in the stories," he finally offered. "You once accused me of taking all of the things that I value in you and putting them into that character."

He stopped to reconsider what he meant to say, but he could hardly leave that statement as the end point. In the beginning, before he really knew Holmes, that might have been true – he may have thought that the Ideal Reasoner really was the true Sherlock Holmes, and that it was _good _for him to be so. Watson knew better now. And why Watson should ever have preferred the cold logician to the real man, he would probably never know. At this point, it probably made no difference anyway. Neither of them could change the past.

"Holmes, that man is not you. Do you understand? He's a caricature. No one would ever accuse that man of heating towels for my war wounds or soothing my nervous fits or…or entertaining fancies of one day keeping bees in the country." This last, Watson stated with fondness, a chuckle creeping into his voice without his conscious intent. Again, the heaviness of sobriety returned quickly, and Watson said, "You _do_ know that, don't you? I have… I have no love for that man. He's not real." It was too dark for the gesture to have any impact, but Watson raised his head and faced Holmes anyway. "_You_ are."

Neither of them said anything for a while, and Watson wondered if perhaps he should have kept his own counsel on the matter. Holmes was not the effusive sort, and Watson's sentiments were the kind that could only ever be spoken under cover of darkness, and even then should be denied for decency's sake. Then, finally, Holmes said, "John?"

Watson forced his apprehension away and turned his head to peer toward Holmes' voice. "Yes, Sherlock?"

Several more seconds passed, weighted and cloying, before Holmes whispered in a manner hindered by the thickness of unwanted emotions, "Thank you."

Watson nodded, relief warring with other more nebulous feelings. "You are most welcome."

The moment remained unspoiled for a while longer, uninterrupted except by their breathing and the sound of Holmes smoking. After Holmes ground the stub in amongst the other remnants littering the saucer on the side table, he turned around and groped for Watson's hand against the bedclothes. Puzzled, Watson let him have it, and then he stopped breathing as Holmes pressed the cold steal of Watson's own service revolver into his palm and closed his fingers around it.

Watson said nothing. He merely disarmed the weapon before returning it to the drawer of his nightstand, and then sat in still silence as Holmes shifted to mirror Watson's pose, sitting up against the headboard in the dark.

Holmes moved again in the dark, a settling of limbs and nothing more. "I thought I heard someone downstairs," he explained. It might even have been the truth.

There may have been a reaction to that statement hidden somewhere deep within the folds of Watson's own memories of the nights that he himself had lain awake with his revolver clutched in his hands. Not all of those nights had followed hard on the heels of his being invalided home. There were others – nights when he swore that he could still hear the deafening rush of water screaming his failure to him in the dark.

Nothing made its way to the surface, however, and Watson merely swallowed before responding, his voice just a whisper of disembodied sound, "Of course, old fellow."

They remained like that, wide awake in the waning dark until the shadows lessened enough that Watson could make out the edges of the sharp features of the face of the man next to him.

"Right," Watson announced simply to break the brittle pall of quiet that had befallen the stuffy and claustrophobic room. "I'll see about a pot of coffee, shall I?" Without waiting for a response, he rose and donned his thick brocade dressing gown before removing the chair blockade from the door. He could feel the weight of Holmes' gaze boring into his back as he left the room.

A soft glow of hearthfire tumbled out into the corridor on the ground floor, leading the way to Mrs Hudson's kitchen. The room was empty, coal scuttle banked low, but a kettle sat out on the stove, needing only to be moved over the fire, and when Watson lifted a tea towel draped over a plate on the cutting board, he found himself inhaling the scent of a loaf of bread that must have been pulled from the oven less than five hours ago. The crust remained warm to the touch.

In spite of Mrs Hudson's assurance of her availability throughout the night, Watson set about quietly making the tea himself. There seemed no need to disturb her at this point, as he was perfectly capable of boiling water for coffee without doing any damage to the dishes.

Apparently, he made rather more noise than he realized, as Mrs Hudson padded quietly to his side as he attempted to slice the bread into manageable pieces, her tread softened by her slippers. "Here now," she scolded gently, prying the bread knife from Watson's fingers and nudging him out of the way. "Let me handle this, Doctor, before you mangle the whole loaf."

Watson allowed her to take over without a fuss, sighing as he ran his fingers through the disorder of his hair. Shaking fingers, he realized then, and brought his hand down so that he could stare at them.

"It's not like cutting for surgery, now, is it?" Mrs Hudson hummed, her hands moving swiftly to section the bread into slices appropriate for toast. She stilled her ministrations long enough to glance over her shoulder at him, and then set the knife down, her features pulling alert and concerned as she moved to push his trembling hand down below the range of his eyesight. "Right. I want you to sit down right here on this stool, and put your head between your knees."

Watson did as instructed and breathed heavily for a moment, the warm air near the fire catching thick in his throat. He hadn't realized that he had paled, nor had he quite registered the faintness overcoming his vision until the blood began to rush back into his head.

"Oh, you poor dear," Mrs Hudson tutted. Fabric rustled and brushed about the room as she moved away, then back toward him. "You must be exhausted." She took his fingers in her own and wrapped them about a small glass from which wafted the unmistakable, biting scent of brandy. "Small sips, now; you know how it is."

Words seemed beyond him at the moment, so Watson merely did as instructed. The alcohol burned a nauseating trail down his esophagus and he coughed a bit three sips in. His head continued spinning, but from the drink this time rather than from a thinning of his blood.

The kettle began to whistle and Mrs Hudson removed it from the stove before the sound could carry much farther than the kitchen. "Do you want to talk about it, then?"

Watson shook his head, but spoke anyway. "He had my revolver."

All movement ceased for a moment, and then Watson heard the clink of the kettle being set down. Mrs Hudson appeared before him and crouched down to be at eye level with him. "He wouldn't, you know."

"No," Watson breathed, shaking his head. "No, I don't know."

Mrs Hudson pressed her lips together and dropped her eyes, probably because she knew that she had no grounds to refute him. "Maybe if you took a holiday, the pair of you. Somewhere in the country."

Watson began to laugh softly, for no particular reason, and it devolved so quickly into a dangerously precarious brand of hiccoughs that he strangled the sound just as soon as he heard it echoing in his own ears. He frowned. "You know, it may be better if you take a holiday. This house… I don't believe that it's quite safe anymore. We'll pay, of course; it's the least we can do after all the trouble…" He trailed off, weary and not quite certain how to finish the thought anyway.

Mrs Hudson studied him for a moment, settling back on her heels as she did so. "Is this about the portraits, then? I promise, no one was up there today, and I wouldn't touch his things. I know how he gets about that."

Watson nodded. "I know. I don't doubt your word." He paused to contemplate his fingers, the sight of his prints viewed through amber drink and crystal against the side of the snifter. "Neither does Holmes. He _does_ trust you, as much as he can trust anyone."

A few moments passed in silence, Watson's thoughts oddly blank while it appeared that Mrs Hudson's were far too active for the indecent hour. Abruptly, she shook her head and pushed herself back to her feet, knees creaking audibly enough in the hushed room that Watson winced in sympathy for her. "Who would do such a thing? I know the man has enemies, but surely, this is too far?"

Watson blinked a few times, then peered up to where Mrs Hudson was tossing tea leaves about with angry gestures. "You take it for granted that this is not just some paranoid bit of lunacy on his part?"

"I take nothing for granted!" she snapped back, and then stopped what she was doing long enough to take a very deep, very deliberate breath. "If this were just a bit of lunacy, he wouldn't…he would be convinced of a conspiracy, and he would be insistent that everyone listen to him about it. He wouldn't be stealing your revolver in the dead of night and…and doing god knows what with it." Her voice trembled and broke a bit on that last strain, and she flung a tea towel onto the countertop before bustling over to fuss again with the bread.

Watson stood, gauging both his balance and the upset that the brandy had left behind in his stomach. "Mrs Hudson – "

"I'll not have him handling firearms in my house!" she burst out, surprisingly forceful considering the calm with which she had comported herself until now. "He was enough trouble with that before, shooting holes in my walls like a demented child. You tell him that, Doctor – he is not to – to touch them under _my _roof, I will not allow it!"

Watson caught at her shoulder and though she shrugged it off, she still turned to him for a moment, into the arm he had stretched out to her. "I apologize," Watson murmured, patting gently at her back.

Mrs Hudson made a frankly rude sound as she disentangled herself and swept past him to resume the tea making. Apropos of nothing, she stated, "I will not take a holiday, thank you very much. The two of you could hardly survive on your own, and I'll not have you mucking up my kitchen trying to make your own supper. It would be a miracle if the house survived intact."

Watson smiled, but it faded quickly. "I don't suggest it lightly. Someone has managed to gain entry to the house. You are not safe here."

"Oh, and you are?" Mrs Hudson retorted.

"If you were to see the intruder, it would no doubt ruin his plans. A witness would run counter to his apparent aims to make Holmes believe that he is hallucinating – "

"I would gladly be that witness."

Watson paused only long enough to regroup. "He would make every effort to silence you if you were. How do you think Holmes would react to that? He is already blaming himself for Cartright – I can see it in him. Do you honestly think that Holmes would be helped by your coming to harm on his behalf as well?"

Gradually, Mrs Hudson's fingers stilled atop the bread slices, and then she covered the sectioned loaf back up with a towel.

"Please, allow us to send you somewhere safe."

It took several silent moments, saturated in heartbeats, for Mrs Hudson's posture to sag. "And who will look after the two of you, then? Cook your meals and do the washing up?"

"Mrs Hudson – "

"No." She wrung her hands in a tea towel and set it deliberately aside. The tea had steeped sufficiently by now, and Mrs Hudson busied herself preparing a tray. "And don't ask again."

"Ah. Refreshment." Holmes sat up as Watson entered with the unaccustomed imbalance of a fully loaded tea tray gripped tightly in both hands. "I perceive that you woke Mrs. Hudson during your foray into her territory. You should really know better by now than to try sneaking about her kitchen before dawn."

"And is it the toast that gave it away?" Watson slid the tray onto his little-used shaving table and breathed a quiet sigh of relief at not having broken anything.

"The scent of the tea, actually." Holmes reached for the little pyramid of cigarettes that he had at some point arranged on the edge of the night table. "The last time you attempted to brew a pot yourself, it was, for lack of a kinder term, foul."

Watson wrinkled his mouth at that, but he could hardly deny it. The concoction had indeed been unpalatable.

In a seeming nonsequitor, Holmes announced, "The verdict and sentencing are to take place today." He did not need to elaborate on which verdict, or for which three men. "I wish to attend."

Watson shut his eyes for a moment, unspeakably weary after so many stresses and so little sleep. "Holmes…"

"I know your opinion on the subject." Holmes struck a match, the flare of sulfur catching on the angles of his cheekbones and the tip of his nose.

"Truly, Holmes, _I_ don't even know my opinion on this anymore." Watson smeared a hand down his face, fingers pausing momentarily to pick at the sleep crusted in the corners of his eyes. He felt sick from exhaustion and wondered, not for the first time, how Holmes always seemed to function so sharply in the absence of proper rest. When he looked up, sighing though he hadn't meant to, he found Holmes watching him with a concerned frown. "I'm fine," Watson assured him, his smile forced.

"You could sleep longer." The words came accompanied by puffs of smoke from the inhalation he had just taken. "It's early, still."

Watson shook his head. "I don't think I could, actually. Not right now." He pulled the sash of his dressing gown tighter about his waist, then arched his back to crack the stiffness from his spine. From the corner of his eye, he could see the disordered pile of cigarettes where just a moment ago, they had been neatly stacked. His gaze shifted to Holmes' fingers and the careful lifting of the lit fag to his lips. "You're trembling."

"It's nothing," Holmes countered by rote, but he seemed to think better of it a moment later. His eyes shifted as if he were trying, for once, not to be furtive. "It's…normal. Nothing to be concerned about; it will pass shortly."

Watson paused in his cataloguing of secondary symptoms – pale sheen of sweat, remembered heat of the skin, a pallor hinting at mild nausea. This was from the cocaine, then. How long had he been feeling the aftereffects of his binge? It had been a full day since Watson had broken into his bedroom. The craving for another prick from the needle must have been nearly overwhelming by now, starved as his blood had to be after three straight days in a stupor. "How bad is it?"

"Manageable," Holmes grumbled around his cigarette. "You needn't worry yourself, Watson. I am accustomed to this."

Usually, Watson was not privy to this stage of the proceedings. Holmes' black fits, and the higher dosage rates of his cocaine, tended to end with several days' worth of sleeping. By the time Holmes returned to Watson's company, he was weak, perhaps, and still prone to a general malaise as if after a mild stomach sickness, but nothing worse. "You say 'accustomed.' Is it always this bad?"

"You become insufferable when you are not rested. I am _fine_, Watson. Do stop clucking at me."

Watson stared into the empty space between himself and the window by his bureau, then focused on their reflections in the glass. Certain that Holmes knew he was being watched, Watson demanded, "How often is it like this? Holmes, this is an undeniable signifier of addiction."

A rustling came from Holmes' direction, followed by the creaking of the mattress as he removed his bulk from it. "Cocaine is a medicinal substance – "

"So is laudanum. And yet there is no question that excessive use - "

"My use of cocaine is not excessive!" Holmes wrenched a rug from the foot of the bed and flung it over one shoulder. "I cannot abide stagnation, Watson. My mind rebels – "

Watson scoffed. "You have not been stagnating of late."

" – I haven't a single case on, and there is _nothing_ to occupy my mind and I am going in bloody _circles – _"

" – and _three days_ without cease, saturating your body with that poison is hardly '_not excessive_' – "

" – and it _will not STOP_!" The shivering increased, and by some trick of extra sensory awareness, Watson knew that he was retracting his limbs, pulling them all in against himself. "Must we have this discussion now?"

It was only the thin note of pleading, which sounded alien when mingled with the unusual imprecision of Holmes' voice, a clogged sound like an old pipe, that stopped Watson from pursuing the matter further. "All right. You are correct; this is not the time for it."

Holmes snuffed some sort of acknowledgement, too resentful for gratitude, and went still beside the closed bedroom door, save for the trembling that fairly rattled his feet against the floorboards that he stood upon. A moment later, he launched himself toward the tea service. The end of his cigarette glowed red as he puffed on it, agitated and uneven in his motions and breaths. "Will you come with me today?"

"Of course," Watson replied, so quick on the heels of the question that Holmes' voice only died out in the beginning of Watson's. More smoke billowed about Holmes' form, and Watson imagined that he could taste the ash in the air.

Hesitant now, Holmes stared at the empty teacups before him and ventured, "Watson…what you said last night… I want you to know that while I may have been...may have reacted poorly to your…leaving me for Mary, and… I never anticipated that you would truly – "

"I was upset." Watson stood and made his way across the room to the wash basin. "Please, let us just put it out of our minds."

Holmes seemed to find this unsatisfactory, but he quieted long enough to return to brooding at the edge of the mattress next to his haphazard pile of cigarettes while Watson proceeded to serve them both tea. Nearly inaudible in the mumble that he made, Holmes offered, "I _am_ trying, Watson. With the cocaine. You must see that much, at least."

The cascade of tea slowed to a trickle, and Watson set the pot back down in its place. He remained there for a moment, a dozen hot-headed responses vying for freedom from the prison he imposed on them with his tightly pressed lips. Finally, once the tempered retorts had quieted, Watson nodded. "I know. It's just…hard, Holmes. It's hard to watch you do this."

Behind him, Holmes breathed, "I know." But that was all that he could offer in response, and while it was undoubtedly true, it wasn't quite _enough_.


End file.
